


Once More

by silvercistern



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Asynchronous Narrative, M/M, Minor Character Death, potentially fatal situations, way up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-10-13 19:42:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 43,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10520535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvercistern/pseuds/silvercistern
Summary: In days most dark, they defeated a terrible monster.Unfortunately, they have to do it again.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [livecement](https://archiveofourown.org/users/livecement/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please read the tags.

The overhead curve of the axe exposed a set of broad shoulders and a weathered, scarred back. This back, like many other things about its owner, had been memorized. 

_Scar, hypertrophic: curves from right external oblique to spine. Result of infected wound, consequence of attempting to catch a wild boar unarmed._

_Scar, atrophic: crosses left shoulder across trapezius to spine. Received when ambushed by renegades while taking a bath in an unexplored area._

_Scar, contracture: widely spread across lumbar area, descending to buttocks. Result of extreme burn due to egregious and unforgivable mage error._

There were many more which could be described by rote. A few others were unidentifiable, though not due to a lapse in memory. They were new.

Or, rather, new enough.

The man swinging the axe was splitting wood with speed and precision that belied the task. Next to him was a broad tower of completed work nearly the height of his own small cottage. With no idea he was being observed, he was singing to himself with an uncharacteristic lack of tune or rhythm. Several feet away, a dripping but empty flagon had been tossed unceremoniously to the ground, perhaps kicked by his bare feet.

Conclusion?

Despite being halfway drunk, this man had chopped enough wood to heat… ah… what was it…? well, whatever this quaint little bird’s nest of a village was called, throughout the winter.

 _Catseye_ , that was its name. How could it have slipped his mind? This town of all places…

His single _tch_ of irritation at his own absentmindedness was enough to gather the oblivious man’s attention and he turned with a fluid, graceful instability that no one would expect.

Except perhaps the person who was watching him.

The axe dangled in the large man’s fingers as his mind assembled the pieces of the current situation. This gave the observer ample time to assess his condition. His face was rugged, weathered, a few days unshaven with dozens of wrinkles from sun exposure, but nowhere did it sag. His hairline had retreated somewhat, but his hair where it existed was still full, untamed nearly vertical grey strands. The only evidence of going to seed that would be clear to someone who hadn’t been familiar with his previous physique was that instead of a wall of abdominal muscle, there was a potbelly beneath his powerful chest. 

The man’s mouth dropped into an enormous O as he made sense of what he was seeing. He whispered something indecipherable. The axe fell from his fingers.

With a look at resembled a snarl, the observer bit his lip hard enough to draw blood, summoning a gust of wind that blew the axe away from its trajectory towards its owner’s bare foot and buried it into a nearby fence. The same wind caught the hood of the mage’s cloak and blew it back, revealing his face.

There was a rather heavy pause as both of them gasped for breath.

“Lord Bokuto,” blood dripped down the mage’s chin, untended, “you should not be using an axe while intoxicated. At your age, temperance is recommended.”

Reaching down and grasping his flagon with a grunt, the man then strode to a barrel under the foundation of his home and filled his vessel to the brim.

“Akaashi,” he took a long drink then smacked his lips, “go to hell.”

 

_“Hey. Hey! HEY! You! Magic guy! Thanks for back there!”_

_The man who had caught up with him was young, with powerful shoulders beneath his shoddy leather armor. The pale skin of his heavily muscled arms had burned browny-red under the bright sun. His black hair stood up straight in a rather robust crested hairstyle, wild, golden eyes underneath giving him a somewhat otherworldly appearance._

_But not of the flattering sort._

_“My men and I, we’re as strong as they come,” the man went on, not waiting for an acknowledgement of any sort, “but we’re not so great when it comes to magic. Well, one of us is a bit good at everything but, you know, only a bit. When it comes to whatever that… thing was, we’re in some trouble.”_

_“Hence the assistance.”_

_The response seemed to confuse the man, rendering him more than a bit nervous. “We’re happy to pay you for that, if you want, even though you didn’t ask so I figured…”_

_“That’s unnecessary. I did it to help those in need. I have prior experience with such a creature.”_

_“Yeah! What a glorious struggle! That’s why I was hoping that maybe you wanted to join up with us!”_

_A startled pause. “That will be impossible. I have other plans.”_

_“And what are those?” the young man leaned his head forward, getting into space that did not belong to him._

_“I’m making my way to the City to expand on my training. I can no longer improve without a magister’s instruction.”_

_“You’re self-taught?? How can you be so good? Well anyway, we’re heading that way too! Why don’t you just travel with us? Don’t gotta join up or anything, just walk along. You’ve gotta be out of magic for a while after all those fireballs anyway. Couple of us are great cooks, and I can sing a song or two, if I have a mind. We can watch you spar! Tell you where you can improve, maybe...”_

_The statement, especially its knowing tone, was incredibly arrogant coming from a non-magic user. It was also manipulative in the feeblest of ways._

_But it was an offer he’d be unwise to refuse._

_“That would be valuable. I shall join until the City, and I will do my best to fight at your side until then.”_

_The man’s pupils grew tiny, then blew out enormously._

_“Really? Let me tell you, guy you will not regret it! Oh, I’m Bokuto by the way. Koutarou Bokuto!”_

_“Akaashi,” they shook hands. He’d never seen a happier person in his life, “Keiji Akaashi.”_

 

 

“I don’t know what in seven hells you want me to say, you scrawny bastard,” the blacksmith leered, swinging his hammer just for the sake of hitting the anvil. “How much have you eaten in the past forty years? A loaf of bread, looks like.”

Ignoring the unnecessary and inaccurate jab at his slender appearance, Akaashi made a second attempt, much more annoyed than the first. “I apologize, Master Kuroo, but Lord Bokuto has been given no other option. He will not allow me a moment to explain, so I must ask for your aid. Also,” his face lightened considerably, “I was hoping I might speak to the Vidis.”

There was no immediate answer. In the silence, a deeper glance at the blacksmith revealed sunken eyes, ragged clothes, and hair much more frazzled than normal. The sparse condition of both the forge and the house, previously observed but not at all considered, thrust a leaden weight on Akaashi’s chest.

He’d missed the signs due to his own urgency and exhaustion.

“He’s gone,” Kuroo’s voice was hoarse as he sat down on a pile of firewood. “Past winter. You know, he was ancient for what he was, usually their minds get eaten up after forty seasons. We had a lot of good years. I’m… I’m grateful,” the crack in his voice was painful almost beyond what Akaashi believed he could stand. 

But he said nothing as the blacksmith reigned in his own grief.

“Left something for you, he did,” Kuroo slapped his knees and stood after some minutes. “It’s in the house, in his garden room. Can’t miss the spot or what he left. One of the few things still around. The spring dried up day after he passed. All his flowers withered.”

Akaashi nodded then bowed his head deeply, “I am sorry. He was dear to me…” He nearly added _in the small way I was allotted_ but this was not the City. Such courtesy, brutally honest though it might also be, would not be received well coming from someone who had communicated only through letters.

He turned to go, only to be stopped at the doorway by some parting words.

“I know why you did it, Akaashi,” Kuroo called to his back. “He and I both did. There’s only one reason makes sense. But I won’t forgive you till Bo does and that well might be never.”

It was impossible to argue with such rhetoric.

 

 

_“Well who’s this lovely lady you’ve brought me, Bo?”_

_The man was tall, with bizarre hair drooping over one eye. He smelled like smoke and metal, making his occupation rather obvious. Akaashi had no idea why people consistently misinterpreted his gender, but at least this man was jovial rather than predatory._

_A strong arm wrapped around his shoulder and yanked him unwillingly back into an unforgiving leather surface._

_“Akaashi’s not a girl. He just has nice hair! It’s long and luxurious and I like it. And he’s our new mage, so you’d better be nice.”_

_He was not a mage._

_“Please don’t make a fuss, Kuro,” a soft voice said immediately preceding a pale, almost luminous person sliding around the blacksmith’s side. His dark-rooted golden hair was covered in trailing vines. Blossoms of sweet pea snarled the otherwise straight strands into twists, green pods peeking out from behind the gold. His eyes were like lamps, and in them Akaashi could see swirling images of his father. Or was that himself? Whoever it was looked so old…_

_“Vidis,” he dropped to one knee, painfully aware that he had no idea of the proper form of address to an individual gifted with such rare abilities. “It is an honor to meet you.”_

_The slight man lifted his head and gave him a look full of incredulous embarrassment._

_“Don’t do that. Call me Kenma”_

 

 

The house when he entered was soaked in an echo of warm contentment so recent it might nearly be grasped. But it could not be touched. In its place was misery, not to mention neglect, made all the more painful in the wake of such happiness. Kuroo had been a tidy man in his youth. This could not be his preferred style of living.

Unable to immediately address whatever it was that his friend had left for him, Akaashi set to help in what small ways he could. He dusted the house, then washed the plates and cups scattered on the table, summoning water with an uninspired cut to his forearm, beginner’s magic. The week-long trip shortened to four days through a complicated casting on both himself and his horse had wearied him to the point of needing covenants for incredibly minor spellwork.

 _Perhaps that’s the point_ , he thought bitterly.

He’d considered washing Kuroo’s clothing, or filling the house with eternally blooming versions of the flowers that had been drawn to Kenma wherever he went. In the end, he stopped himself. Grief was inconstant, an unpredictable companion. He could not risk breaking a man’s heart even further through a poorly executed act of sympathy.

At least the plants in the house were still alive. Certainly through Kuroo’s efforts, now that Kenma’s mere existence was not enough to keep them thriving. They filled a room that was bathed in light. The sun shone through expensive glass panes that made up an entire wall. There Akaashi was certain Kenma had spent hours upon hours playing silly games to fight off the indecipherable visions which plagued him in his mounting years. He had seen the passing of many vidis, and what was done to cope as the time neared. It was a quiet, sleepy death. And a painless one, if the visions could be avoided.

But as he sat in Kenma’s chair and shuddered out his own stingy tears, it seemed less painless than he had once thought.

He allowed himself exactly three minutes of grief, which was generous. He let go of the rest, forcing the cathartic moment out of himself and into the world. The denial of grief, the refusal of the possibility of comfort and above all, the pain left in its stead, would make a powerful covenant. It would rejuvenate his deprived stores of magic for the journey ahead. But Akaashi released the opportunity. The pain shifted into magic of its own wont and, unclaimed, scattered through the room, burrowing deep in the plants and other delicate things.

It also caught in his hair.

He stood up, leaning on the bone-bleached wood of his staff more than he’d needed the day before. He no longer had a firm concept of what was travel exhaustion and what was age. Before this journey, he had been astoundingly fit for someone a year short of sixty seasons, easily besting his students in competition, running two leagues a day to maintain physical endurance and increase his capacity to hold and create his own magic. His hair had only turned truly silver at his temples, light salting the dark elsewhere in a combination many ambitious courtesans claimed to find distinguished and attractive. Its texture even hid the fact that it had been thinning on top for at least twenty years.

There was no point in entertaining such vanity, considering the task he’d been charged to complete.

He scanned the room and it took no time at all to find the smallish box, carved with rough but charming flowers. The lid opened smoothly, revealing the fresh scent of sawdust. The carving was rough enough to lack professionalism, but fine enough to show the skill of a practiced hobby. He had no idea who had picked up this pastime. Kenma? Kuroo?

Bokuto?

Though everything about the world and his experience insisted otherwise, he told himself it was one of the villagers, probably a busty woman with large muscles and a beautiful laugh. With this lie firmly clasped in his soul, he focused on the contents of the box:

_A large sphere of lapis lazuli._

_A dried peapod, the buttery color of leather indicating its age._

_A small bit of folded parchment crumbling at the corners._

These contents had been assembled decades ago.

He gently unfolded the parchment, making no sense of its contents. Despite lacking the haughty mysticism and drama of peers such as the City’s histrionic Gardener, Kenma’s visions were just as nonsensical. They only became useful when the foretold event was imminent.

Putting the thoughts of seers aside, he held the heavy lapis in his hands, the color of the stone bringing out the blue of the veins under his paper-thin skin. The gem was good quality, he could feel the conduits and focal points of power humming underneath his fingertips. Removing the peerless boulder opal he had received from his son on his fiftieth birthday, he pushed the gem into the perfect circle at the top of the staff where it fit with no magical adjustment necessary.

_Protection. Truthfulness. Moving forward from past ills._

As if he deserved such a thing.

Not to mention more control over water, which had always been his weak point.

He left the opal in the magic-soaked garden room. Perhaps the power of creation it generated would find Kuroo, giving him inspiration to immerse himself in his work, granting him distraction until the grief of loss had eased.

Such things worked, for a time.

 

 

_“I need a better axe, Kuroo.” Bokuto’s mouth was full as he spoke. He ate with the sloppy inefficiency of someone who had never been hungry enough to cherish every crumb._

_The blacksmith tried to flick his hair back, and failed dreadfully, instead spraying the entire table with the foam from his beer._

_“I made the axe you have. Why ask for another?”_

_“You made this axe and a dozen others in the same day! I want a good one! We’re on a qu–”_

_A large hand covered his face. “We’re in a tavern,” Washio grunted before letting go._

_“He wants something nonstandard,” Komi twirled a knife on the tip of his finger. “For–”_

_Konoha’s hand slapped over his companion's mouth and the spinning knife stuck in the scarred wood of the table._

_"Mister, Bokuto wants to cut down some enormous trees.”_

_“And not catch on fire in the process,” Sarukui added._

_Scanning the room, the blacksmith leaned in angrily, “I’m not gonna make something that’s just gonna get you killed. It’s bad enough if you get caught by the Garrison.”_

_Akaashi’s look of concern was apparently more visible than he wanted because Kuroo stared straight at him._

_“Did you tell your new friend about your history, Bo? How you and me ran off?”_

_“We didn’t run off! That’s what cowards do! We jus weren’t about to kill some kids in that village, is all.”_

_“Desertion is still desertion in the eyes of the law,” Akaashi said, checking again to make certain his rough staff was still at the end of the table. Bokuto gaped at him as though his pragmatic acknowledgement of the City’s laws were somehow the deepest betrayal._

_“Kuro,” a small voice spoke, resonating through the rowdy tavern and somehow reducing the level of noise. Kuroo turned, and behind him was the small Vidis, the day’s growth of plants twining down his ears and around his neck like precious jewels._

_“Yes, pussycat?” the rough man asked in the sweetest voice Akaashi had ever heard one man direct to another. A blush bloomed on the Vidis’ cheeks at the term of endearment. Something that no one else seemed to notice, or at least acknowledge._

_“Not now,” Kenma sighed with irritation. Then his voice, his posture, his everything changed altogether. The sweet peas in his hair visibly grew, their pods heavy with seeds. His tawny hazel eyes glowed gold. He stood up straight._

_“Make Bokuto an axe, Tetsurou,” he murmured matter-of-factly, very much unlike Akaashi expected a seer to sound. “It will be the second most magnificent thing you will ever make.”_

_His posture fell, his flowers calmed, and his eyes retreated to a more natural color. The sound of the tavern swelled once more._

_“Keiji,” he said after a long pause, “I was hoping we might spend some time together.”_

 

The eavesdropping had not been intentional at first.

But his life in the City had taught strict attentiveness to overheard conversations. Akaashi, who felt he still had some sense of rural propriety, made no effort to hide himself. He simply stood where he had been standing outside the forge. It was not his fault he could overhear a loud private conversation. And it had to be extremely loud because according to people who should have better things to talk about, his hearing wasn’t as good as it had once been.

“Look, Bo,” Kuroo sighed on the edge of rage. “If you don’t go the Guardian’s gonna kill you. He’s gonna kill both of you. This isn’t a summons you can run from.”

“Nah,” Bokuto slurred, much drunker than he was before, “Kaashi, ee’s ‘portant. Too ‘portant ta come back here, ‘nless he wants somefin. Ee s’not gonna get killt. Yer a fool ta listn…”

There was the sound of a scuffle.

“Do you think this is what I’d have for myself?” Kuroo growled. “Losing Ken, then losing my best friend to some quest he’s got a snowflake's chance to come back from? Damnit, you ass, I wouldn’t tell you to go unless there weren’t a single other choice!”

“mm jus’ run ‘way.”

“Akaashi could find you anywhere in the known world. The two of you are lin–”

“He _wouldn’t_ ,” Bokuto’s anger brought him closer to coherency. “Not if I said no. He’s a lot o’ fings, but he ain’t that.”

There was a sound of something falling, probably Bokuto as he tried unsuccessfully to sit down. Or maybe it was something tight and miserable in Akaashi’s soul smashing itself to pieces.

“Probably not,” Kuroo sighed, “but they’d torture him to death trying to find out. He’s not as scrawny as he looks, he’d last a good long time.” 

It was unfortunate that the blacksmith was not exaggerating.

“Wha?” Bokuto’s voice was much rougher than Akaashi remembered, but the tinge of vulnerability could have been from his twenty-year-old self.

“Do you need me to carve it into the wall? This damn quest will probably kill you, but if you don’t go, the City’ll definitely kill you. If you run, they’ll kill him, but not till he’s not a person anymore. He has people too. Sure, they won’t touch nobility, but they don’t care about commonfolk. He has two little sisters, no? They probably have grandbabies now.”

Akaashi felt sick.

“Damn,” Bokuto spat.

“You know how I feel about the City, Bo, but Kenma always said no, leave em be, so I never did much of anything. Just had some chats, here and there. Sowed unrest where I could.”

“You spect _me_ to do sumfin about it?”

“Only if you win.” Akaashi could hear the smirk in Kuroo’s voice through the wall.

“Fine,” Bokuto said after a long sigh. “If I gotta die, might ‘s well not be wiv his death on my conscience. But I need you ta fix my axe. I uh… broke it.”

“I dunno if notching it all to hell when you chopped up a statue of her Ladyship counts, but I won’t fix it.”

“Then how the fuck am I s’posed to fight?”

There was a long pause, and Akaashi was certain that Kuroo was doing something smug and ridiculous.

“Give me two weeks, and I’ll make you somethin’ that might just keep you alive.”

The next two weeks looked to be the most awkward of Akaashi’s fifty-nine years.

 

That night he returned to the small spot on the edge of the village where he had left his horse to set up the tent he’d been provided. He did it manually, to keep his joints limber and his magic on reserve. Or so he assured himself. Really it was more than that. Exhausted as he was, he’d have to walk through town stark naked, break a toe, or worse to forge a covenant strong enough to put everything together. He decided walking on a whole foot with his pride intact was more important than his weary limbs. His joints protested decision strongly when he finally found his bedroll.

Bokuto came to him the next morning. Early. He had always been an early riser.

He was hungover. His eyes were red and the fine wrinkles under them had puffed into heavy bags. Akaashi crawled out of his tent when he heard him obnoxiously clearing his throat. The movement gave the impression of his being much more lithe and limber than his joints generally allowed.

The fog of late summer twined around their feet and the surrounding hillside. No one else in the world seemed to be alive.

“Why do you wanna do this?” Bokuto grunted, looking everywhere but at Akaashi, exposed as he was in nothing but the long linen shirt he had slept in.

As though his saggy knees were scandalous.

“Because,” Akaashi’s back was straight, but behind it his fingers worried against each other, “I do not wish to see you killed.”

“Me?” Bokuto’s eyebrows had a lot more forehead to cross as they ascended to his hairline. “Ya don’t talk to me for forty years and it’s me yer worried about?”

Akaashi did not respond.

“Damn you and your secrets!” Bokuto snarled. “It don’t matter, d’rather risk the chance of dyin’ than getting’ killed outright.”

“Then we have an agreement.”

“The beginnings of one, but I need new gear. Kuroo can’t get a piece finished for two weeks. Says he’s invented some fancy river steel that won’t break. Need new leathers too and,” his voice dropped into an embarrassed grunt, “I gotta get used ta not havin’ beer. Wanna work some other stuff out before then too. Rules.”

“I’m comfortable with any boundaries you require. And I can send a bird to the City. Though I believe there is no immediate urgency surrounding our likely deaths.”

“Glad ta hear ya admit that’s what this is about.”

“I’ve never denied it, Lord Bokuto.”

“Yeah?” he looked up for the first time, just to make eye contact before falling into an exaggerated bow, “Well, Lord Magister Akaashi, _Consort of Her Ladyship_ , I s’pose since you outrank most everybody in the realm, includin' me, you’re the one who'd know best.”

Having delivered Akaashi’s title flawlessly, he stood up and spat, close enough to be insulting, but far enough to be hygienic.

Akaashi swallowed down the bile in his throat. It burned.

 

 

_“You’re self-taught,” Kenma said, rather than asked. He moved his red piece across the board, taking nearly all of Akaashi’s blacks. Which was not that impressive since he had absolutely no idea how to play the game._

_They were sitting in a pleasant room, a small window of actual glass providing light to the small collection of plants that had been brought indoors. Akaashi had never seen glass before. It was amazing._

_“I was gifted with magic, and my family saw fit to send me to the City to train.”_

_Kenma shook out his flowers and then lifted his eyes, “Your clothes are poor. Your staff was cut in the summer. The stone inside it is nearly worthless. But you took down a monster anyway. Gifted is an understatement, but your family could not send you anywhere.”_

_His insinuation of poverty was not subtle._

_“My parents insisted I go, despite my protests. My family struggles during the harvest. They needed my help. I did not leave willingly.”_

_Kenma hummed, “Neither did I, when the flowers came.”_

_Vidis were beyond rare, and considered a blessing to a family. What’s more, their powers manifested very young. To cast away a young child destined for renown was nearly inconceivable and spoke of idiotic cruelty. Luckily Akaashi was well-practiced in keeping his expressions under control, or his horror would have been obvious._

_“I am sorry,” he bowed._

_“No need. That is how I found Kuro and here we are. Just as you have found people of your own.”_

_There was a quiet pause as Akaashi moved his pieces. “Are you and he…?”_

_Kenma looked up from the curtains of his hair, surprised. “Many don’t seem to realize. Call us stubborn bachelors. Even Bokuto does, though he visits often and sees only one bed. You are smart.”_

_“To say I am smarter than him is not to say much,” Akaashi quipped._

_He expected Kenma to laugh, but instead he yawned._

_“Conversation is tiresome. But I’m curious about you. So I will trade you: runes for gossip and a promise that one day you will come back to this town.”_

_“Return? When? And how did you know I can’t read?”_

_“It’s obvious. As to when? I have no idea. Just come back.”_

 

 

Akaashi spent the remaining days preparing his body and mind for the laughably impossible task that awaited them. Around him the village was abuzz with activity, its inhabitants working together to gather the materials to make Kuroo’s “river steel,” an alloy that Akaashi had neither seen nor heard of.

The villagers were kind to their unexpected guest; kinder indeed than his past acquaintances. None more so than a small, dark-haired, young man who worked as the baker’s apprentice. Not quite so young, perhaps, but young enough. In the later afternoons, Akaashi would catch him surreptitiously watching as he meditated or read. After days of this, he asked if he would like to join him.

The young man was nothing like his son, though they were about the same age. He had neither astounding talent nor an unquenchable thirst for improvement. But he also lacked arrogance and the naïve fragility that came with a privileged upbringing in the High Estates. Altogether, Shibayama, was kind and eager, his magic a quiet delight. He was more than happy to pick up whatever scraps of lore Akaashi had the time to share.

And Akaashi found that Shibayama gave back, in his own way.

They were sitting on the grass, the runes for various concepts drawn into the dirt, and Shibayama chattered as he copied them over and over so as to commit them to memory. He shared the village talk, generally about people of whom Akaashi had no knowledge.

Generally.

“Lord Bokuto… nah, but doesn’t like to be called that. _Lord of what?_ he says _I never lorded anything!_ He’s never been quite… right, ya know? I wasn’t even born yet, he showed up ten years afore me. But I heard he was so wild at first that only Master Kuroo and the Vidis could handle him. Drank so much Master Kai wouldn’t let him near his brew for a whole year. And the _women._ ”

“There were many?” Akaashi found himself asking, as though he didn’t already know the answer.

“Always! I remember, even when I was a kid, and still now every once and again. Mostly travelers, and ya never saw em again. Cept one, but they seemed more like drinkin buddies than aught else.”

“I see.”

“But, Lord Magister…”

The title felt like shackles around his feet. “Please. Akaashi is fine.”

The young man made an uncomfortable face. “But, sir, you know when you see a person, who’s kinda… ya just know he’s happy? That’s who he is at heart? A sunshiny sorta fella?”

“Yes, Shibayama, I do.”

“Well Lord Bokuto’s like that, I know he is. And I’ve seen ‘im smile plenty when he’s drunk or when he’s goin ta be with a woman. But sir, he ain’t never smiled with his whole face.”

Dark eyes turned to Akaashi with a desperate urgency.

“I dunno what this quest is about, sir, but please don’t let him die jus’ yet.”

 

 

_Taking “the second-best thing he’d ever make” to mean the maximum reach of his current skill level, Kuroo toiled at the forge under the watchful eye of his master, a constantly-laughing man named Nekomata._

_In between his reading lessons (for indeed, he could barely read at all), Akaashi and his teacher played more checkers. The Vidis had tried to teach him chess, but Akaashi spent too much time agonizing over strategy for their games to get far._

_Checkers was fine, although they were both terribly sore losers._

_Or at least Akaashi was. Kenma had yet to lose, though it was fairly obvious he would not enjoy the experience._

_“Tell me how you met Bokuto,” the unassuming man softy demanded._

_Akaashi had to hold back his chuckle at the memory. “His band had been set upon by a creature. Bokuto was running around in circles chasing something that wasn’t there, while his men drooled nearby. It would have been funny if the thing hadn’t been about to kill them.”_

_“What was it?”_

_“I… well, I don’t really know the names of magical nightmares. Just names that I made up. There were several of this type that lurked in the fields back home. They came out at night. I called them clappers, because of the noise they made with these strange flaps on their necks.”_

_“And you knew how to stop them?” Kenma’s voice was faint, almost quieter than the greeny sound of the stems and blossoms as they gently grew through his hair._

_“One took my sister once. That was when we discovered my magic. I was ten, and sent out a blast of purple fire that destroyed everything in a thirty-foot radius. Including her foot, which had to be cut off. Now she walks lame with a special shoe.”_

_“But alive,” Kenma cut off his self-loathing._

_“Keep Bokuto alive as well," he added, a command. "Kuro cares for him, even though he is too loud.”_

 

 

Kuroo worked without stopping. His lanky apprentice was always with him, and by the sounds of things, nearly always underfoot. The baker, a small, angry, red-haired man, brought them food: loaves from his oven and preserved meats from the butcher. Based on the amount of noisy bickering that came with his arrival, Kuroo was generally uninterested in eating, though he seemed to accept refreshment the serene brewmaster brought without protest.

Metalworking magic was not even remotely Akaashi’s specialty. His fire was no the right fire, and any attempt to cast it would drain him to a degree that would make travel difficult. But he offered his assistance anyway. It was immediately rejected, and he found himself pushed out of the forge by the overeager apprentice. The silver-haired young man babbled on about magical impurities in the process, which sounded contrived at best.

During all this, Bokuto was nowhere to be found.

With his rather unexpected free time, Akaashi wrote letters to his son, his wife, and other important people in the City. He sent them by bird, all to the same man, the only one whose letter was to be read immediately. The response came quicker than anticipated. The speed smacked of worry and desperation.

 

 

> Keiji,
> 
> I have said before and I will say again that this is an insane venture. One I understand you cannot avoid but I protest regardless. Obviously I am protesting to the wrong man, but I have always been somewhat of a coward and I do not wish to die by protesting to the right one.
> 
> Your family both close and extended is well, for good and for ill. The Guardian’s mind grows softer by the day, and he is pleased to simply wander the fields around the estates, tending to animals as though he were a simple farmer. The Master of the House does his best to care for him. Luckily he is a clever, but even the most exasperating of men are not immune to the ravages of age and Tendou is growing very slow on his feet.
> 
> Your brother-in-law does not seem aware of our friendship, so my head and position seem secure. Not that many vie for the Master Librarian’s job. Lore is a thankless profession. But I am happy as one unfit for battle to serve those who carry sword.
> 
> Or in your case, an axe. How is that? Don’t pretend I don’t know how cruel this all is for both parties. Please do not sacrifice yourself needlessly for his sake. I do not think he would want that, because I am certain you would not.
> 
> I have your letters to your family both in the City and in Goldenfields. They will be distributed if the stone you left alerts me of your passing. Rest assured that I will smash it to pieces if it does so.
> 
> Telling you to be careful is a pointless venture. You have been sent on a death mission and being careful is how you will fulfill it. Be fast, Keiji. Be brave and be smart. Push yourself to the absolute limit. The two of you are unstoppable together. I should know, I chronicled your adventures myself.
> 
> Also, after eating my wife’s mutton pasties last month you owe me midday meal. I expect recompense upon your return.
> 
> - ~~Ennoshita, Master Librarian of the City~~ Chikara

 

The night before their assumed departure, it rained so heavily Akaashi's tent caved in. Unwilling to waste magic, his strength, or his store of secrets, he sought refuge in the hot forge, where Kuroo was still working. He was immediately expelled by the blacksmith himself.

"It'll be finished tomorrow. Won't have you ruining it trying to make it better," Kuroo's eyes were pits in the flickering light of the fires and he swayed on the verge of collapse. "Sleep in the house like I told you from the beginning. Dry yourself or you’ll catch a chill. And take whatever bed you like, it's all the same to me."

Akaashi did not sleep. He did not do anything but sit, shivering, next to a stack of towels placed on the edge of a second bed. A bed he was certain existed for one person and one person alone. He did not expect that person to arrive, dripping, in the doorway as if he didn’t have his own home.

They were both drenched beyond what was healthy, but Boktuo did something about it first.

"We have ta have some rules," he growled, beginning to strip off his soaked clothing.

"Of course, Lord Bokuto," Akaashi folded his hands.

This was a twisted mockery of a scene that should have taken place a long time ago. Stripping. A bed. Deep unfulfilled desires.

"The first rule:" Bokuto threw his leather overshirt against the wall where it hit with the same smack a human body might make, "don't use your mind games ta get what you want from me."

"Not even to save your life?"

"I can save my own life!" he lifted his thick wool undershirt over his head and hung it on the bed's footboard. "I’m not a boy anymore. I know you’re clever, more than me, more than anybody. Tell me what to do, and I'll listen, but if you ever trick me again I’ll leave us both to die."

 _I have never tricked you,_ hung on Akaashi’s lips, but he pulled back the words. 

"I understand, Lord Bokuto."

"The second," he stripped off his trousers, and was now in nothing but soaked breeches, "stop calling me ‘Lord.’ I want a title from them ‘bout as much as I want the clap again. Just Bokuto. Or... whatever you want, it doesn't matter, just not that."

"Fair enough... Bokuto.” Seeing there really was no need to hold back, Akaashi stripped off his own jacket and vest, leaving him in a soaked linen undershirt sticking uncomfortably to his skin. It was even colder than before. It would be best to strip completely and get under blankets.

"Don't wanna see you naked," Bokuto muttered.

The hypocrisy of such a thing coming from a man in his nothing but his drenched, clinging near-transparent breeches was infuriating.

"I will do my best to preserve your modesty."

"And I don't wanna talk about–”

"Neither do I."

There was a heavy pause steeped in the smell of wet clothing.

"I want you to kill me if somethin’ goes south and your precious Guardian comes after us." Bokuto seemed to have given up his enumeration of his requirements. This was the fifth.

"I will cast a spell on our departure that will do so in a manner that doesn't suggest suicide. Otherwise they might come after our loved ones–"

"I don't wanna hear about your beautiful wife," Bokuto snapped, brittle and dry.

"I have no interest in talking to you about her," Akaashi couldn't catch himself before he snapped back.

The silence was humid. 

"And if you sacrifice yourself for me, I'll off myself outta spite. Don’t want your charity."

Akaashi stood up ramrod straight, voice cold as he thrust a towel into Bokuto’s hands. "I expect you'll allow me the same courtesy."

Bokuto reached for the towel and started to chuckle as he dried under his arms.

“Not that it matters. We’re both good as dead anyway.”

 

 

_“Don’t hurt him.”_

_Akaashi recognized the voice, but he did not recognize the reason. Kuroo sat down next to him on the grassy hill at the edge of town where he’d been trying to read the book on magical covenants that Kenma had given him._

_“There’s a lot Bo doesn’t understand about himself just yet. Doesn’t even realize what me n Kenma are. Though you did. Wonder what that says about you.”_

_“There is nothing wrong with my proclivities, nor yours.”_

_“Now, now, no need to get offended. I’m just saying that Bokuto gets fixated on things sometimes. He’s never gotten fixated on a person before, though. So, you know, you’re kind of spec–”_

_“Bokuto has entertained four different women during the week we’ve been here. Two of them at the same time. One of them he is currently bedding. He is not fixated on me.”_

_Kuroo put his hand on his shoulder and squeezed, “You’re probably right, Akaashi. But have you noticed every single one of those pretty ladies had dark blue eyes and curly black hair? Kinda similar... don’t think it was possible to get it perfectly right, though. Only one in this town with eyes like yours is my old master, and I don’t think old fellers is Bokuto’s type.”_

_Akaashi stiffened._

_“Course,” Kuroo pressed into Akaashi's shoulder to push himself up, “I don’t think Bo’s noticed yet himself. Be gentle with his sensitive heart, you pretty little genius. But maybe once he sees my axe he won’t be thinkin’ of you no more…”_

 

Akaashi had no idea what he’d been expecting, but it hadn’t been a battleaxe made of water. The name river steel made perfect sense now. The metal looked liquid, running in undulations across the flat surface of the head until it was sliced and sharpened into a wicked curve of a blade, glittering keen edge bowing from hook to hook on both side of the double ax head. It was topped with a spearhead, in case, for some reason, the blades were not enough. The haft was black wood, unstained, and darkened by fire. The bottom section was wrapped in golden leather and pure white thread.

“See something you like?” the blacksmith leered, though he didn’t take his eyes off of Bokuto who was staring at it almost like he was staring at a lover.

“This is a masterpiece,” Akaashi breathed. “I doubt anyone could improve on it.”

Kuroo’s looked at him with a deep, deep sadness. His bluster was gone and his voice creaked when he finally responded.

“Best thing I’ve ever made in my life, just like he said. Might as well give up and let Lev take over.”

Reaching out for the haft and sinking his fingers into the grip, Bokuto swung the weapon over his shoulders.

“Doesn’t matter what it looks like if it don’t cut,” he growled.

He led them out of town, not just Kuroo, Akaashi, and the blacksmith’s apprentice, but the entire population of Catseye who gazed at the weapon as though it were a long-awaited newborn.

They stopped in front of a tall tree of quite modest thickness. But there had to be something about it because all around it axe hafts and shafts, some completely broken in half, littered the ground. The marks from their blows scarred the bark, but went no further into the wood.

“Axebreaker,” Lev said, his accented voice filled with unasked for reverence.

Bokuto was running his fingers across the ripples of steel. The axe had no adornment, unlike his previous weapon which Kuroo had decorated with an assortment of claws.

This one had no need of enhancement.

Pulling back the blade, Bokuto kicked up his leg and held his foot against the bole of the tree, as though he were testing it. Then he dropped his hip and swung with an easy powerful grace that Akaashi’s found still took his breath away.

He expected it would take approximately three wedges to bring down the tree.

It took a single swing.

The crowd scattered frantically as the tree fell towards them, most getting out of the way in time, but a mother with young child in arms was still scrambling, likely to be caught in the branches with scrapes or worse.

“Bokuto, you looked magnificent,” Akaashi confessed, feeling an immediate swell of magic, more than he could hold for long. Within the same instant he summoned a wind strong enough to push the tree towards an unoccupied area.

The villagers gasped and cheered, small children mobbing him and tugging at his long grey cloak.

But he only had eyes for Bokuto, who was looking back at him with a confounding assortment of emotions. His face was flushed with delight, his eyes open in shock, and his mouth turned down in rage.

“Don’t need you to tell me when I look good. Specially not just to get a bit of power.”

 

 

_“So wait, hurtin’ yourself and all that shit isn’t some kind of blood magic?”_

_Akaashi shook his head, trying to point out the drawings in the precious book Kenma had given him. To take with them when they left in the morning. To have forever. Admittedly, the illustrations made only vague sense to him, let alone someone who had no real understanding of magic. But they were all he had._

_“Covenants are made through pain and sacrifice. Most mages simply hurt themselves, because it is the most obvious. The stronger the injury, the more power. But the downside of this is once the injury is made, it cannot be healed magically – only over time. To do so would cause ten times the agony to fall back on the caster.”_

_Bokuto looked horrified, and about to protest, but Akaashi cut him off._

_“But there are other ways to give things up. Telling secrets or confessing private information. Holding back tears of mourning or not allowing friends to share long-anticipated joy. Abstaining from sex, spirits, rich foods, or many other pleasures all work for a time, though their returns diminish with each passing day. Leaving reciprocated love unrequited seems to be one of the most powerful.”_

_“So just doing things you don’t wanna do?” Bokuto scratched his head._

_“It is more complicated than that,” Akaashi mused, turning the page. “There has to be longing, or humiliation, or some other deep emotion tied to the act. Beyond simply not wanting to make the covenant, it must ache deeply to make the choice to do so. It seems to most work for those who experience profound emotion.”_

_“Isn’t that gonna be tough for you then?”_

_“What?_

_“You’re just so calm, yaknow? Didn’t think you got wild feelings or anything.”_

_Akaashi closed the book firmly. “Perhaps. But there is much you don’t know about me.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this story was halfway finished. liv made me feel like it was worth finishing.
> 
> sopaipillasvoladoras drew [an amazing kenma and other characters](http://silvercistern.tumblr.com/post/159188561015/sopaipillasvoladoras-doodles-from-once-more-by) and i am weeping tears of joy.
> 
> livelylute created [this astounding kenma](http://silvercistern.tumblr.com/post/164564287995/livelylute-then-his-voice-his-posture-his) and i'm overwhelmed.
> 
> Bee painted[this masterpiece of a kenma](http://silvercistern.tumblr.com/post/165098138075/beechichi-im-sorry-i-havent-painted-in-forever) and i'm overwhelmed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i forgot to mention, i wrote this for hqmagicfest in the fall of 2016, but uh... never finished or posted it.

They didn’t bring horses. It didn’t make sense to: the outlands were rocky, with a scant few roads that only a skilled rider could handle. Akaashi had extensive riding experience, but Bokuto hated horses for deep-seated, almost traumatic reasons that only Kuroo seemed to understand.

So they walked to the northwest. For days.       

There were spells that could make them walk faster, but such things were for young bodies. Maintaining one for hours would leave Akaashi struggling to move the next day. So carried on by their own power, they led the sleepy pony that the broad woman running the Catseye stables had leant them. In reality the beast was a gift, since no one expected they would ever return.

Armed only with his newly-forged axe, Bokuto had dressed in thick brown breeches draped with a long tunic the color of late summer wheat. He wore minimal leather armor, bragging as he always had that if someone managed to touch him with a weapon, he might as well die anyway. Mail and a thick wool undershirt were packed for their final destination only because Kuroo had refused to hand over the axe without some kind of armor as well.

Akaashi dressed in a version of what he always wore: black trousers, a white linen undershirt, and a high-necked, black doublet. It was as understated as it was possible for his status, slim, but quilted for some warmth. The embroidery round the neck and sleeves was a pattern of white feathers, insignia of the house that was both his and not. Over all this, he wore his grey hooded cloak.

He reeked of wealth and wished he had dressed himself differently. At least in the guise of a field medic since he could not pass as a soldier. But wearing his own garments for so long had imbibed them with a sort of power of their own, and without armor he needed all the protection he could get.

Armor was not something mages _could_ wear. It disrupted the flow of magic, slowed their instincts and reaction time, and made complicated spellcasting  nearly impossible. There were those who, despite this, chose to wear it while fighting enemies in close quarters. These mages were deformed, missing fingers, eyes, even entire limbs from covenants made both before and after battles began. Such behavior seemed to erode their minds as well.

The Guardian had been in the process of banning dismemberment among those fighting in the Garrison, but as his mind went, so went the likelihood of the process coming to completion. Unless, of course, his successor shared his views, which was completely dependent on whether or not Akaashi and Bokuto completed their task. Their impossible task. 

The journey was silent beyond the sounds of their feet.

  

 _It_ _would be untrue to say that Akaashi disliked the sound of Bokuto’s singing voice. Unlike his somewhat grating speaking voice, it was high and clear and wavered in pitch at just the right times to make it almost unbearably charming._

_But did he have to sing so often?_

_“Oi! Boss! You gotta sing so much? I don’t think our new mage is very musical!” Sarukui called, a glimmer in his eyes._

_“I’m not a mage,” Akaashi muttered, finding the unmerited title deeply mortifying._

_“Maybe not,” Konoha shrugged, “but if you can blast voidbeasts with nothing but that scrabby old stick of yours, you might as well be. Do you want a new one, by the way? I’ve got four bowstaff, and I’m pretty certain yours is about to snap. We can probably lash your rock on the top of one of em.”_

_“Or maybe even get a better rock!” Komi piped up, glancing at the pathetic piece of smoky quartz at the top of Akaashi’s staff._

_“He means to steal one,” Washio clarified, not breaking his long stride._

_They were all pushed away in one enthusiastic swipe._

_“Give the man some room!” Bokuto bellowed, doing the exact opposite. His thick arm fell across Akaashi’s shoulders, warm and crushing as it always was._

_“Akaashi…” he sounded more vulnerable than normal, “ya like my singing, right?”_

_“I appreciate the quality, but the quantity grows wearisome.”_

_“Akaaaaaaaashi!!”_

 

“Can ya stop?” Bokuto grunted.

“Stop?” he slowed his pace, which had hardly been excessive.

“That infernal humming. Ya can’t even carry a tune.”

“I…” he had no idea he’d been doing anything of the sort, “…apologize.”

His traveling companion huffed with disgust.

But the silence was broken and he might as well take the opportunity. “Perhaps now is a good time to stop for a brief rest. I am a bit winded.”

It was an understatement. His entire body was sore. There was a profound difference between a two hour run on familiar trails and hiking on rough foreign terrain for six. Akaashi’s hips ached especially, but his feet and back were not faring much better.

“Gone soft living that fancy life, eh?”

“It may have escaped your notice but I am not the young man I once was.”

“And I am? I’m older, even, and ya don’t see me slowin’ down.”

“I spend my days teaching, not cutting down trees.”

Bokuto didn’t respond, he just made a terrible scoffing noise that didn’t seem to fit his mouth.

“We can stop,” he relented, voice low and growling. Without another word, he grabbed the pony’s reins, tied them around a rock, then started marching in the opposite direction.

“Where are you going?” Akaashi called, wishing there was a more dignified method to ask that question.

“Lookin for water,” Bokuto called over his shoulder, stomping even farther away.

“I can summon water, just give me a moment.”

“We’ll get it the old-fashioned way, like normal people. Don’t need ya to cut yourself all to hell, or say something that makes things worse ’n it already is.”

Bokuto’s insistence on nonmagical solutions inadvertently revealed the true ruggedness of the region. On his quest for water, he descended into a small valley and almost immediately disappeared. After that, Akaashi had no idea where he had gone and wouldn’t without actively tracking him. He felt that would be inadvisable, given Bokuto’s current opinions on magic.

After days of travel, the monotony of the countryside was gnawing at him. The wind caught on the stones that pierced the landscape, making strange groaning and wailing sounds around their sharp edges. Slate greens and flat purples of grass and heather provided little contrast to the dull grey of the rocky ground. If maps were correct, the sea was less than an hour’s walk to the west, but it seemed like the strange craggy landscape was all that was left of the world.

He should have anticipated something was amiss. But the scent was downwind and the monotony had pulled his mind elsewhere.

 

_“Akaashi!” Washio growled out, “Use this.”_

_He held out one of his arrows, its shaft longer than Akaashi’s own arm._

_The creature they were fighting was made out of a disconcerting mix of light and dark. The blackness was so profound as to be a hole in the world, and the light so bright that it was impossible to gaze at directly. Every twenty breaths it sent out a blast of what could only be called the opposite of magic, draining the surrounding plantlife, leaving dusty twig skeletons in its wake._

_Bokuto had been caught in one of those blasts. Through Konoha’s limited protection he’d miraculously survived with a grey face and hair that had fallen around his ears as though he’d been soaked. Sarukui and Konoha had pulled him to the very edge of the blast radius, missing another hit by the skin of their teeth. Now they were trying to drag him up the hill. Really, Washio was the only one strong enough to do the dragging and he was otherwise occupied._

_This was Akaashi’s moment, and he had no idea what to do. He’d been practicing with his bursts of purple fire, focusing them through his new, sturdy staff and shaping them in a variety of ways but the creature was well beyond the distance he could reach, no matter what the technique._

_He stared at the arrow, then pulled a branch of similar length and girth from his feet. Igniting his hand, he lightly touched the end._

_Purple fire engulfed the wood, dissolving it in a hundred sparkling stars that hovered, as though in wait for some command, then dispersed. His fire didn’t burn normally, it never had, but either way the purple flames devoured the end of the stick quickly._

_But not instantly._

_“Once I light this arrow, the fire can’t touch your bow, and you have to shoot immediately. Can you look at the creature?”_

_“No,” Washio admitted. “But I’ll not miss.”_

_Akaashi had no idea how such a thing would work, but his companion trusted him, and he might as well do the same._

_With a swallow he went on, “Once the arrow is sent, I want you to pick up Bokuto and run. All of you. Don’t look back.”_

 

Dizziness, then a blast of energy that knocked him face first into the ground. He came terrifyingly close to smashing his head into one of those infernal rocks, a blow that would have instantly killed him. Instead he was pushed him to the teetering edge of sense. The air was thick with the familiar smell of storms and burned corpses. With it was a unique tang of not-quite blood, the coppery snap thick on his tongue. It mixed with the iron taste from his bleeding lip.

Something was caressing his nape, its mere presence slashing a nonexistent wound in his neck. Akaashi could feel it as though it were physical, his magic trickling through the laceration like a steady drip of blood. The flow increased, thanks to a sort of suckling against his skin that turned his stomach.

There was a way to summon Bokuto, wherever he was, but Akaashi’s mouth was full of bile and his mind was full of spiders so he could not do it. Not that Bokuto would be particularly useful against this sort of adversary.

There was absolutely no more embarrassing way to die than this: stripped of life and magic by some low-grade void creature. One that he could otherwise disperse into the wind with no trouble. No trouble if his arms would just move, or even if his mind would clear enough to focus.

But he could not, and without Bokuto, it was impossible make a verbal covenant. Secrets didn’t mean anything if no one could hear them. He was going to die and then Bokuto would follow, though he’d probably put up more of a fight.

 

_“So I’ve been wondrin’, where does magic come from?”_

_Bokuto scooted closer to his bedroll. They were lying side by side in the back of the wagon Komi had somehow acquired. “I mean ta say, why do you have it and I don’t? Is it cause I’m strong already?”_

_“You have magic,” Akaashi turned the page of Kenma’s book, finding it even more of a struggle to read the words while they were moving. Unfortunately, since neither of them would be able to walk for a few days, riding was the only alternative._

_The only real casualty of the entire enterprise was Akaashi’s hair. It had been withered away to nearly nothing. Now it was short, curling at the ends in a way he was not entirely pleased with._

_“Wait, what?” Bokuto sputtered. “So why is it that I’m not shooting balls of fire and the like?”_

_“Because you only have a very small amount. Everyone does: it’s inherently tied to life. Magic clings to living things like dust from the road.”_

_“And so yeh’ve rolled in it, then?”_

_“More like my boots are wet so as I walk I attract more. According to this book, no one knows why this happens.”_

_He kept the “I think” to himself, still not feeling quite proficient in the reading department._

_“Oh! Well then, what can I do with what I’ve got? Hell, Akaashi I’m gonna be a legend now that I know! Fighter and spellcaster!”_

_He sighed with just a tinge of amusement, “I have no idea how my own magic works, let alone that of others. You probably have more than normal, since you survived yesterday. But not enough to use in anything other than the most desperate times. Without a backup source, you’d push yourself to the edge of death.”_

_“Well how do ya make yours work?”_

_As irritating as this line of unanswerable questions was becoming, perhaps verbalizing the experience would help him to understand what the book was trying to say._

_“It used to be based in terror, but when I used it that way I had no control. The power would explode. Though it was the same purple fire, it would erupt in a blast that spread around me, one I could not control.”_

_“And it didn’t hurt ya?”_

_“No,” Akaashi opened his hand and a ball of purple fire glowed on his palm. “Even if I swallowed this, it would not cause me harm.”_

_Bokuto’s jaw dropped, “That’s real different. Akaashi, I’ve seen lots of fire mages in the Garrison, but their fire was normal-like. And… they burnt themselves all the time.”_

_He closed his fingers into a fist and the purple glow was gone. He had no idea why his manifestation was so abnormal. But he had scanned through the book, and purple fire was not the indicator of a disposition that favored water, air, or earth either. He’d always felt his humor was phlegmatic, but his abilities with water magics were abysmal. Nothing else made even the remotest amount of sense.  He certainly wasn’t a vidis._

_Ignoring Bokuto’s observations and his own confusion, he moved on. “Whatever it is, I can now direct it by focusing on my target. It requires discipline, but the staff and stone allow me to concentrate. In essence I focus my intentions into the object, allow the urgency to build until I cannot bear it, and then… release.”_

_Bokuto chuckled lecherously, “Think I might jus’ know how to do **that**.” _

_“…I’m not speaking of sexual satisfaction.”_

_“Are ya certain ‘bout that, farm boy? Sure sounds like it.”_

The creatures all had similar scents. They were swirling vortices of unmagic of varying strengths that had clawed their way into existence by sapping the life from the world around them. That process always smelled the same.

When Akaashi had found his twelve-year-old sister under such a creature, her sapphire blue veins were starkly visible beneath the paper-thin translucence of her normally tan skin.

Dying.

Months later, when she could recall the experience, they found that time between the creature’s attack and her rescue had lasted only seconds. She had been drained of her small magics and brought to the verge of death in that little time.

But she had been a young girl. For Akaashi, who had spent decades deepening the well that contained his own magic, it was going to take a rather long time to die.

“Leave ya alone for a _trice_ and you’re already like this!” grunted the only voice he was likely to hear. “Guess ya really need me, eh Akaashi?”

There were many things Akaashi wished to say in response, but he was preoccupied with dying. He felt a gust of wind close to his spine, then heard a disembodied scream from the creature. All at once, his body was free. With that liberty he could, at least, roll onto his back. The process exhausted him. At that angle the rest of his existence was slowly seeping out through the invisible wound on his neck. Or maybe gravity had nothing to do with it. He’d never been injured like this before.

Bokuto was crouched over him, bristling with fury. He’d exploded into a uniquely terrifying person, one whom Akaashi had only seen emerge in times of complete desperation. But this Bokuto was much larger than he had been forty years ago, or even four days ago. Full of much less beer, he carried twice as much thunder.

“I’m only gettin’ that one hit in, aren’t I?” he muttered, putting himself between Akaashi and the low to the ground wolverine-like creature. It was bleeding out cyclones of magic from a gaping hole in the side of its body. Bits of this caught on the spines of nothingness that made up its fur and popped out of the world.

Akaashi wanted to tell Bokuto that, yes, he was right. The creature phased in and out of existence at will. He wanted to tell him that the single hit had only been managed because the creature had to be present in the world to feed. But he couldn’t speak.

Bokuto reached back, scrabbling around on the ground between them. His hand grazed Akaashi’s and he stopped immediately.

“Wait are ya really…? Damn. Hand’s clammy as hell,” he reached down to quickly skim Akaashi’s forehead and made an unhappy noise at whatever he found there. “Didn’t expect ya to get killed this quick.”

He didn’t leave Akaashi an opportunity to respond, just reached back and grasped his fallen staff. Bokuto took no notice of how Akaashi’s back curved off of the ground the instant someone else’s fingers touched the wood.

“Alright then old man, tell me how ta use this. What was it ya said that once? Get scared, get desperate, then shoot off? Dunno why I thought that was enticing. Well, I know why, but I sure was wrong about that, eh?”

If there was no other evidence of the dire nature of their situation, the fact that Bokuto dropped his axe was more than enough. He ran his free hand down the staff to secure it. His motion allowed Akaashi to experience the bewildering sensation of both the large and little death approaching at the same time.

The plus side of this was the cotton that blurred his mind pulled back for a moment, long enough to croak, “Watch out,” as the low form of the creature jumped at Bokuto’s back. Not knowing what else to do, Bokuto ducked then swung at it pointlessly.

Missing its target, the crackling blackness landed right next to Akaashi’s head. The mere scent of it pulled him to the brink of unconsciousness. The heather and grass hissed under the beast’s nothingness, life boiling away until all that was left was dust. Akaashi scrabbled through his mind, trying to find some basic spell of protection, but his memory was incomprehensible in the swirling fog. He teetered on the verge of a sleep from which he would not awaken.

“Hey, hey, hey, ya overgrown hell-weasel!” Bokuto bellowed, waving around a peerless magical object that wasn’t his as bait. Akaashi felt inclined to point out that if the staff was destroyed, it was quite likely that he would die. Especially considering the weakened state he was in. But since Akaashi couldn’t talk, and was dying anyway, Bokuto might as well try whatever it was that he was going to try.

The creature lunged once more, and Bokuto ducked and rolled, making his way to Akaashi’s side. In front of them, the void creature was digging into the ground, sucking all of the life from the bog and leaving a terrible scar in its wake.

“Can I use this? Will it kill me?”

“It will hurt,” Akaashi hacked out, his coughs covering up the word “me.”

“Ah, well a little pain never got me down before,” Bokuto planted the edge of the staff in the ground and held onto it with both hands.

He turned around and gave Akaashi a quick look, “Always did kinda wonder what my humor was. Guess we’re gonna find out. Or die. Ya know, Akaashi, ya probably could have paid a bit more attention out here, seein’ as ya coulda dropped this thing pretty easy if you weren’t half dead.”

With another disembodied scream, the creature ran towards them, dashing straight through the jagged stones as though they didn’t even exist.

“Well then, I’m scared,” Bokuto announced. Akaashi could feel his hands clenching the wood as if they were digging into his own wrists. “But I’m thinking on this piece of wood here,” his eyes fluttered across the landscape, “and I hate ya, Akaashi, I really hate ya, but I wouldn’t want a dog ta die like this. Could run away easy, but I’m not some coward. Don’t think I could ever leave ya, to be quite honest.”

The fool had made a covenant without even realizing it. 

Akaashi could feel the surge of power overwhelm his pain. He felt it even before Bokuto did, light, crisp, tiny spirals that jumped through rough hands and danced through the lapis, building on itself as it twisted up in Akaashi’s own magic. He’d always suspected the quiet magics Bokuto had within him, but now he could _feel_ them as they mingled with his own. 

The void creature was almost upon them, the smell of crisp burnt hair overpowering all of Akaashi’s senses. The delight at Bokuto’s manifestation was pulled away as the invisible wound in Akaashi’s neck was sucked open as wide as it could go. Death rushed forward faster than before.

Bokuto glanced back at him. For a fraction of a second, his eyes softened and his face gained a painful gentleness.

And then the world filled with light, followed by a thunderous crash.

 

_“Why does it take so long to recover?” Bokuto whined from his bedroll at Konoha, the camp’s medic. It had been an official position he’d held in the Garrison before he quietly left for the same reason everyone else had._

_To avoid murdering children._

_“A creature made of nothing tried to suck the life out of you and I saved you with a little coating of ice,” Konoha slurped his stew. “Don’t complain, boss. I don’t know how you’re not dead.”_

_“But Akaashi’s already on his feet!”_

_“That’s because our little mage is tougher than you. By all accounts, he should be dead,” Komi offered._

_“I’ve never heard of anyone attacking one of those things and surviving,” Saru added. “Best thing to do is run and hope they disappear before you run outta steam.”_

_“But I’m sick of ridin’ in that infernal wagon!” the whining had reached a fever pitch. “It hurts my ass, ‘mong other things.”_

_The argument went on, but there was nothing to be done about it. One by one, members of the camp took to bed, save Washio, who always took the first watch. Luckily, Washio was also the most tight-lipped of Bokuto’s band of miscreants._

_“AkaaAAAshi, what are ya doing?” Bokuto hissed. He was surprisingly quiet, considering Akaashi had climbed into his bedroll with him. Especially considering Akaashi was wearing nothing but his underthings._

_“An experiment. Take off your shirt. Or just lift it, if you are cold. The skin to skin contact is necessary.”_

_“I’m not cold, but would ya mind tellin’ me what this experiment is?” Bokuto demanded through gritted teeth._

_“I think I can make you heal faster,” he explained softly, hoping not to wake the camp or gather Washio’s attention. “You’re weakened because magic is in some sense entangled with life and yours was drained. Perhaps, if our skin touches you’ll be able to walk in the morning.”_

_It was a nearly insane idea._

_Bokuto stiffened and his voice turned to gravel, “Oh, ah, well then. Sure do wanna get back on my feet, so if ya think it might work.”_

_“As I said, it’s an experiment. It might not.”_

 

Akaashi woke up, face covered in cold morning dew while the rest of his body was deliciously warm. The wound on his neck had closed, unable to stay open without the presence of a void creature. His magic had replenished itself to the level necessary to survive, but he felt hungover and weak. His staff was in his hands, which was at least part of the reason he’d recovered so quickly.

The other reason was snoring loudly behind him.

Bokuto’s presence was no longer really necessary. Akaashi had reached stasis and wouldn’t just absorb magic from the nearest available warm body. But it was fairly likely he was going to die within the month and he could not deny how pleasant it felt, waking up like this.

He snuggled into the soft warmth of Bokuto’s chest and settled into a delicious half-sleep that obliterated both the past and the future.

 

“We’d like two rooms if ya got em, ma’am,” Bokuto said hours later. His voice was pleasant, ignoring the fact that they were drenched and Akaashi couldn’t stand up on his own.

The buxom woman behind the door looked sympathetic. “I’m sorry, but we only ‘ave one room available this evenin’, that with the storm ‘n all. I kin set it up for yer Lord, and we ‘ave space in the hayloft for yerself. S’not much, but it’s warm ‘n dry.”

“We’ll share, madam,” Akaashi croaked. It was not exactly the authoritative, aristocratic tone he’d been going for, but she seemed to have grown two additional eyes and they were fluttering around her face.

“Ee’s ill!” she squawked, “Ah, mister, I’ll just run up and light the fire, sit im down in the common room, it’s good ’n warm in there. I can send fer a healer if ya like?”

“Thank ya, lovely,” Akaashi could tell Bokuto was winking without looking at him, “but I’ll be taking care of him.”

“Some broth at least?” she offered with concern, and Bokuto accepted.

There was a dizzying moment when Akaashi was moved from the doorway to the common room, then an instant of confusion when Bokuto scared off a young man and his much older lover from one of the large chairs by the fire. He sat Akaashi down none too gently, then crouched next to the chair. It was uncomfortable, the dryness of his front in juxtaposition with the complete saturation of his back.

“So you’re the lord, then,” Bokuto pouted. “Why can’t I ever be the lord?”

“Because I am dressed as one and you look like you could tear a barn in half,” Akaashi coughed and was annoyed about it from start to finish.

“Yer the one who can tear a barn in half,” the petulance increased in fervor, “leastways ya could if ya stopped being sick and stupid. And, the way ya talk’s just from tryin’ too hard not ta sound like a farm boy. Ya sound like me if yer drunk enough. Worse, even.”

Akaashi completely ignored the second statement. “I have very little magic, since that creature nearly killed me and you sapped my staff. If you would just allow me to make a–”

“I was savin’ our lives!” Bokuto cut off that line of thinking for the tenth time at least. “And gettin’ ya off, apparently,” he tipped his head toward the very unfortunate white-tinged wet patch that had soaked through what had to be the single dry section of Akaashi’s trousers.

“The body does strange things while in the throes of death,” Akaashi pronounced, certain that the red on his cheeks was from fever and not embarrassment. He was not about to explain the intimate connection between a mage and his object of magical focus. He was certainly not about to tell Bokuto just what he had done by using someone else’s staff.

“Whatever ya say, Lord Magister.”

When the innkeeper came to let them in to their room, Bokuto had to carry him up the stairs. The bed was small. The fire was pathetic. No matter how many times Bokuto stoked it, it died down to embers within minutes. The air was damp, but it was just warm enough to not freeze. A frigid wet stuck to everything. Akaashi was racked with chills. His staff was nearly drained, but he held the lapis close to his chest for what little magic it would pull from the surrounding air. 

“Can’t believe I gotta take care of ya like this,” Bokuto grumbled, pulling him across the little space they’d established between them. “Not gonna sleep a wink. You’re way too–” 

 

_“–hot, Bokuto. We need to stop in a village for you to recover. Magical injuries make the body susceptible to illness. You’ve been feverish for days. You need to see a healer.”_

_One night of sleeping together had led to two and then many, as Bokuto found himself able to walk, but getting progressively sicker. But even weakened as he was, Bokuto’s strong arm was difficult to escape and he pulled Akaashi close with it._

_“Mfffm Keiji,” he murmured, burying his face in his hair. His nose tickled, and his breath carried the sickly sweet smell of ill health. Akaashi did not want to enjoy the position he was in for a variety of reasons._

_“Perhaps you might prefer Washio keep you warm,” he said softly. “He’s large, and produces a great deal more heat.”_

_Bokuto did not respond, just snored and trembled. But with the added warmth, he gradually stopped shaking. Akaashi found himself falling asleep in the bow of his arms._

_In the morning, their bodies were sticky with the sweat of Bokuto’s broken fever. Akaashi found he couldn’t rid himself of Bokuto’s faint scent without jumping in the river._

_Which he didn’t do for some time._

 

“Ya fart a lot for someone so scrawny.”

The fever was gone, as was the terrible clammy chill. The sun came into the room through one of the small mica paned windows. Akaashi felt like a somewhat feebler version of his normal self. The bed reeked of his own sweat, and apparently other things.

“I’m sorry if I inconvenienced you,” his bland response seemed to infuriate his sleeping companion. He followed it up with his honest gratitude, “I apologize for the lack of attention that led to this disaster.”

“Just don’t let it happen again,” Bokuto conceded with oblivious arrogance as he pulled on his boots. Akaashi wanted to push him through the tiny window headfirst into the horse trough. But instead he took his ball of lapis and put it back into his staff where it belonged.

After they attended to their toilettes (Akaashi’s in the room, Bokuto’s in the horse trough of his own volition), they paid the innkeeper and her wife and fetched their sleepy pony. The beast had observed the void creature’s destruction with about the same dismay as he observed his feedbag being removed. Quite the attitude to be desired in a pack animal.

They left the town in as dignified a manner as they could, Akaashi leaning heavily on his staff so that it did not seem he was too weakened to walk. He did not want word of his condition to find its way back to the City, specifically into the ears of his brother-in-law or his son. Once they had made it out of view, Bokuto crouched down and refused to move until Akaashi clambered up onto his back.

“Ya need to eat. Meat or somethin’,” he grunted.

The question of how he knew that snuck out of his mouth even though he hadn’t wanted it to.

“Look, I know I’m a damn fool, but I noticed some things, Akaashi. And one of em was how much venison ya ate after a fight. Don’t think you were ever this close to dead before – probably need ta eat a whole deer.”

“Our road doesn’t lead into a forest, and I’ve forced us off track more than enough.” 

“I may not wanna see ya, but there’s no other way I’m making it out o’ this if you’re dead. So I’m taking ya for food. It’s not like ya can stop the fourth most powerful fighter in the realm the way ya are now.”

Akaashi considered arguing with such a specific and ridiculous claim, then thought the best of it.

Considering it was entirely possible that Bokuto wasn’t wrong.

He’d never fallen asleep on someone’s back before. It seemed like the sort of thing children did and his childhood seemed like nothing more than a tawny golden glow far behind him. When he woke, Bokuto was singing softly, a song Akaashi remembered well. It was a common tavern favorite, bawdy and rude, speaking of travel and passion and adventure.

Everyone in the High Estates thought that Akaashi despised it.

“Your voice hasn’t changed,” he noted, wondering what exactly had possessed him to say such a thing.

“I’m well past the age for that!” Bokuto scoffed with a hint of nerves, the observation having taken him off guard.

Akaashi shook his head as best he could whilst leaning against someone else’s body. “I meant, it has maintained itself well as you’ve aged.”

“Compared to what?” Bokuto turned to look at him but couldn’t really. “Are ya saying the rest of me’s no good anymore?”

Akaashi wiggled free, finding he could stand on his own feet well enough.

“In many ways, you seem exactly as you did at twenty,” was his political response.

There were two ways this… _compliment_ could be taken. The first, which seemed more likely based on Bokuto’s level of absolute loathing for him, would be angry disgust at how Akaashi had sidestepped the question. The second, which seemed much more like Bokuto in his youth, would be obnoxious peacocking.

“Well ya don’t say!” Bokuto turned his head and gave him a thrilled look. “Guess the City hasn’t sucked out the bit of heart ya had, Aghaassshi.”

Oh. It was both.

He had been mistaken. He couldn’t stand on his feet at all.

 

They reached the seashore with little incident on a day where the sand, the water, and the horizon were all shades of gray, even at midmorning. Akaashi had never seen the ocean before and it was much less and much more than he had anticipated.

Bokuto took off his boots, rolled up his breeches and spent much of the first hour kicking the sand and splashing in the gentle waves. Akaashi intended to spend the same time meditating in the hopes that he could regain even a fragment of the magic that had been stripped from him. Bokuto would not listen whenever he attempted to share him one of his many minor, embarrassing secrets. He stopped his hand whenever Akaashi tried to cause himself pain. It was difficult to understand why, since Bokuto was also going out of his way to insult him. Meditation was the only remaining way for Akaashi to gather the strength to bring them both back alive.

Focusing was difficult, but sleep came easy.

He woke up with the sun low in the sky, starving, covered in sand from where he’d fallen on his side. Next to him was a small crackling fire with several fish cooking on strategically placed sticks.

“Ya gotta eat all of these,” Bokuto commanded, his mouth full of fish himself. “Figure ya don’t eat so much, lookin like that.” He tipped his head, unimpressed, with what was apparently Akaashi’s entire physique.

Akaashi didn’t care. He was voraciously hungry.

“There’s more?” he rolled into a sitting position and reached for the first fish. He devoured it with little regards for the pinlike bones that caught in his teeth and jabbed at his cheeks.

“I found some oysters…” Bokuto looked like he didn’t know whether to be disgusted or impressed. Ridiculous, as though he’d never seen the amount of food Akaashi could consume in a short period of time.

“What’re oisters, then?” he swallowed, finishing his second fish. He struggled to maintain his affected speech. Gorging himself while half-awake was a taxing endeavor.

Bokuto cracked open what looked like a small knobby rock with the haft of his axe. Inside was a wet-looking piece of flesh. It seemed quite unappetizing, but Akaashi grabbed it by the tip of his fingers and slurped it down anyway.

“You’re eatin’ like an animal,” Bokuto whined. “At least taste it so ya can get a bit of the flavor! They’re real good! Used to gather em up when I was a boy.” 

Akaashi bit the next one. It tasted like salty copper smeared with a sparse dash of butter in an attempt to cover up the bitter tang of the sea. The texture was awful so he still had to slurp it down in the end. Bokuto seemed to expect something from him, like excitement at the flavor.

“Dun care how it tastes,” he grabbed another fish.

 

_“Does havin’ a heap of magic make you hungry all the time?” Komi inquired, too amazed to eat himself._

_“I doubt it,” Sarukui took a bite of the precious fresh bread they’d managed to acquire, stuck as they were on one side of the river until it was low enough to cross. “But being poor tends to have that affect.”_

_Akaashi pretended he couldn’t hear as he all but inhaled the stew Komi had made. It was delicious, with vegetables and potatoes and some type of meat Washio had brought out of the forest. Neither of his companions was completely wrong. His appetite was based on both hunger and habit. He would always devour food when he could get it, knowing full well it might not come again for a long, long time._

_Next to him, Bokuto had been quiet, which was odd. For a while, Akaashi had assumed he was watching him eat as he tended to do, but now that he was no longer eating, it had to be something else._

_“Ya should learn to fight,” Bokuto said with finality. “I’m gonna teach ya to fight.”_

_Komi sprayed his stew all over his shirt, “Boss, last time you tried to teach sombody to do something, you broke his arm.”_

_“Was how to catch a fish,” Washio added, stonefaced._

_Sarukui leaned back onto his elbows, “Face it, Kou, you’re just undirected raw power.”_

_Next to him, Bokuto sputtered, angry and flattered all at once. Sarukui winked at Akaashi, knowing exactly what he’d done._

_“He isn’t completely wrong, though,” Konoha mused. “Akaashi’s nothing more than a magical canon right now. Knowing basic combat would save his power for when he needs it – can’t fight everything with magic, anyway. Not to mention if we fight bandits or a boar or something we maybe don’t want to dissolve into nothingness.”_

_“See, I told ya, Akaaashii! I can’t always save the day!”_

_Bokuto had yet to save the day._

_“Course you can’t,” Washio grunted._

_“That in mind,” Konoha stood up and dusted off his trousers. “I’ll teach you. What kind of weapons can you use? Obviously not a quarterstaff: you don’t even know how to hold the one you have.”_

_Akaashi stood up, trying to press down the surge of wounded pride, “Very few, though I’ve always been rather handy with a sickle.”_

_Bokuto’s laughter filled the camp, “Aghaasheee! No one uses those to fight anything but a wheat field!”_

 

Things would have happened very differently, had Bokuto been less proud of his fishing ability and Akaashi less hungry for more fish. But as they were, Akaashi was setting up their tent far beyond the tideline and Bokuto was fishing on the edge of the waves. The sky had grown cloudy, but being unfamiliar with the sea, Akaashi paid it little mind until the smell of lightning filled the air.

He turned just in time to see the enormous snake lift its head from the water, and strike.

 

 _The_ _rap of Konoha’s quarterstaff against his elbow was one of the more painful experiences of Akaashi’s life thus far. But it served only to infuriate him further. He lay two awkward strikes in quick succession in recompense. They weren’t pretty, but they left Konoha shaking out his hands from the vibrations of the wood._

_“You’ve got a weird sort of fury about you,” his teacher snorted. “Not like him,” he tipped his head at Bokuto who was pressing himself off the ground over and over while Komi and Sarukui sat on his back and played cards. “You don’t let it get to you. If anything, you push yourself harder. I think you’d be terrifying if I actually made you mad.”_

_Akaashi didn’t really know how to respond._

 

The snake was enormous.

Its body at rest came up to Akaashi’s shoulders and its head was lifted high as a cottage roof. The rest of it trailed into the sea, black and iridescent blue stripes dripping with water and seaweed. The broad shape of its head screamed danger, and that head was striking at Bokuto, repeatedly.

He was completely unarmed.

Akaashi ripped off his sleeve and using Bokuto’s axe made a sharp slice across his arm, blood welling up immediately. The wound would scar deeply when it healed. Akaashi called out his companion’s name at the same moment that he threw the weapon. The action was driven by much more strength and precision than Akaashi possessed normally. The axe whistled through the air, its haft landing directly in Bokuto’s outstretched hand.

The snake struck again, only to be met with the hard swing of blade burying itself in the jelly of its eye, which unexpectedly exploded in a fountain of steam. The beach was swamped with the smell of burnt hair and dust, mingling with the already present scent of lightning.

Akaashi drew his hand back from his staff and shot a flurry of flaming purple arrows to land along the snake’s neck. They would bury themselves in its flesh, then bind to each other, taking off its head.

Only they bounced off, hissing next to the long streaks of blood that were dripping into the sea.

Bokuto’s blood.

 

 _Komi_ _landed in a cloud of dust, staring up at Akaashi with a shocked expression. Or perhaps he was looking at Sarukui who was also standing. Standing on his tiptoes with Akaashi’s staff pressed against his throat._

_“Hm,” Konoha gave an impassive look from the fire where he was roasting their dinner, “Akaashi, you shouldn’t be allowed to be this good at more than one thing.”_

_“Perhaps it was my teacher,” he gave a small smile which was not well received from his sparring partners._

_“Ya gotta fight with the boss from now on,” Komi groaned. “Or Washio. My ass hurts from gettin’ knocked on it.”_

_Sarukui fell back on his heels when Akaashi pulled the staff away, “I didn’t sign up for this kind of regular beating myself. Good job, though. Nice to see you won’t die in a tavern brawl.”_

_“Did I hear somethin’ about a brawl?” Bokuto called. He stopped, looking at the battered members of his company. “What’s all this?”_

_“Our little mage is apparently very clever with a stick and momentum.”_

_“Oho… sparring, Akaashi?”_

_“There’s plenty of time for you two to have a go at each other after we eat,” Konoha smirked._

_“I’d like ta see you knock me over, Akaashi,” Bokuto brushed up against him as he made his way to the fire._

 

He broke his finger. It wasn’t one that had been broken before. In forty years, he’d only ever needed to break two – the pinkies. This time he broke the middle finger on his dominant hand. It was the biggest loss he could manage and still hold his staff. Bokuto could damage this creature and Akaashi could not; it was a void beast inside of something that repelled magic. That meant a physical battle, and one that had to be over as quickly as possible.

The pain from his finger throbbed. Each time he felt the pulsing ache, a surge of power flowed through him. He finally felt like himself again, more than a little thanks to all the food he was burning through. He was stronger, and the head of his staff sang with magic.

A spell of strength and agility, the one he had avoided during their hike, was the first he drew up in his mind. When applied in full force for a short period of time, it allowed for a… somewhat quicker recovery. The casting was wordless, he’d done it a hundred times. The hum of power flowed into his arms, his legs, giving them strength he did not posses. Even his mind felt sharper, faster. The sound of the waves, serene even in this chaos, was loud in his ears.  

Pulling off his doublet and kicking off his shoes, he held his staff horizontally in his good hand. He placed the palm of the other on the lapis, and pulled it in a wide sweeping curve. The stone followed his fingers as though he had drawn a pattern in the sand curling the stone into the sharp end of a billhook.

Sickles weren’t for battle, even ones on long sticks. But he’d never forgotten the curve of the blade and the sting of a quarterstaff. 

 

_“Akaashi, I gotta say, ya need to learn to attack head-on.”_

_“That would require I increase my strength, a non-immediate task.”_

_They were dancing around each other, covered in sweat. Bokuto’s strikes nearly all missed as Akaashi spun and ducked and feinted. Akaashi did not go beyond defense, but he had tripped Bokuto more than once. He discovered that Bokuto was quite a bit faster than he looked, nearly light enough on his feet to fly._

_“So what happens when you’re stuck facing someone bigger ‘n me, eh?” Bokuto’s quarterstaff caught Akaashi in the lower back. It hurt terribly, but not as much as it could have._

_“Stop holding back,” Akaashi growled, spinning on his foot to face Bokuto head-on._

_“Awh shit he got him mad,” Konoha laughed._

_Flinging his staff wide, Akaashi ran straight–_

 

Towards the snake’s midsection was the best line of attack. Bokuto was still fighting as best he could with whatever injury was bleeding out. But Bokuto’s brute strength was not the source of his power. He was almost useless on the ground, not to mention this snake was almost definitely venomous.

Akaashi had approximately three minutes before Bokuto was dead.

So he ran.

His feet moved swift and light, sending clumpy streams of sand behind him. His speed alone kept him from digging into the soft ground and slowing. In his left hand, he clutched his staff, his middle finger burning. The pain sent him ever faster towards the snake’s assumed midsection.

In his peripheral vision, Bokuto’s axe dropped to the ground, his body with it. Prone and unmoving, whatever he’d been poisoned with was starting to take effect.

But he’d served as enough of a distraction to bring Akaashi to where he needed to be. He swung his staff so that the lapis sickle imbedded itself into the top of the snake’s back, immediately climbing to join it. A musky odor sprayed out of the wound, as though the snake was nothing but an inflated pig’s bladder filled with the smell of dust and burning hair.

Despite the hole in its back, the creature hadn’t yet noticed him, which was worrisome, since that could mean it was devouring Bokuto. It was necessary to draw its attention - exactly what Bokuto had made him promise not to do. But rules or not, if Bokuto died, Akaashi would almost certainly die himself in the course of their task. Rules or no, he couldn’t leave him there to die like a field mouse.

Spinning his staff, Akaashi buried the hook in the iridescent side of the snake, took few steps forward, then started running. The razor sharp edge pulled up and out, peeling the flesh away from whatever nightmare was beneath. 

The snake, fully cognizant of the danger, struck, but Akaashi flipped out of the way much too quickly, running to the other side then sprinting to the creatures neck. Its head was lifted almost twice as high as he was tall, but he ran up the vertical scales, embedded the hook at the base of its head and allowed the creatures own flailing to spin him around. In desperation to free itself from the irritation, the snake collared itself in a band of it’s own severed flesh.

Bokuto was directly beneath Akaashi, his face looking purple, blood still pumping from his arm and spilling down the sand.

There was perhaps less time than originally thought.

With a kick against the chin of the beast, Akaashi flipped and landed on his feet. Tossing his staff to his right hand, he snapped his thumb against his broken finger, summoning a whip of purple fire. Lassoing the snake caught it snug in the collar he had made. Akaashi drug himself up the beach, yanking the creature away from Bokuto. Every beleaguered step tightened the lasso around the the snake’s neck, until steam began to pour out of all the small wounds Akaashi had made.

With a crack of his finger that would leave it unusable for the rest of their journey, if not Akaashi’s life, the whip burst into purple flames three times stronger than before. A might pull and the head of the snake crashed towards the ground, dissolving in a flurry of sparks more intense than Akaashi had created yet in his life. It was gone before it touched the shore. The body collapsed into itself, flattening like a skin the snake had left behind.

The only sounds left were was Akaashi’s heavy pants and the rolling waves of the sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks again for liv's prereading, and everyone's encouragement.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm uh... having major troubles with my eyesight so please excuse any egregious mistakes: i probably couldn't see them.

_“Konoha I’m not sure I can do this,” Akaashi muttered. “I’ve never… um… actually_ made _fire, let alone...”_

_“You can,” Konoha sighed impatiently, “and you will.”_

_“Make fire?” Bokuto squawked. He was lying face down on a blanket with Konoha’s knee pressing into his upper back to hold him down. “I don’t think ya need that to fix me up, Akaashi!”_

_“I mean he’ll heal you!” the medic snapped, pushing his sandy blond hair out of his eyes. There was no question he was fed up with the whole business. He slid his knee upwards to rest on Bokuto’s neck, exposing the full swollen bruise on the base of his spine._

_“Now hold still. If you hadn’t let Akaashi get such a good hit in you wouldn’t need this anyway… **boss**.”  He turned back to Akaashi, smirking. Konoha had the sort of face that always seemed to be smirking, so it was hard to say exactly what he was feeling. This smirk seemed a little larger than normal, whatever that meant._

_“Now, I know everyone says that you have to be good with water magic to heal, but really healing’s all about feeling what the other person feels and turning that into… well… a sorta spell, I guess. But it’s more than that. When you’re first learning, or if you don’t know anything about the person, you can just imagine their pain and a time where you felt somethin’ like it. But when you do it that way,” Konoha chuckled, “the next morning feels like you spent all night at the tavern.”_

_Akaashi nodded, holding his staff close to his chest. His moment of pride at bringing Bokuto down had evaporated the moment Bokuto didn’t get back up._

_“But the more you know about someone, the better you can heal them. Married couples don’t gotta make covenants to heal broken bones, let alone measly bruises like this.”_

_“Akaashi and I ain’t married, Konoha!” Bokuto laughed awkwardly._

_“I’m teaching him to heal, not describing the great tragedy of your life.”_

_Bokuto choked and sputtered into the dust, but Konoha was more interested in Akaashi’s blush._

_“Anyway,” he lowered his eyebrows, “as it just so happens, you have something in common beyond our travels.” Konoha turned, “Who taught ya your runes, Boss?”_

_“Kenma! Can write everybody here’s name, too!”_

_“Learned Akaashi’s mighty quick,” Konoha snorted. “But your enthusiasm aside, see what I’m saying, baby mage?”_

_Akaashi’s confidence in the enterprise was less than ideal._

 

“Not yet, Koutarou. I am telling you, _you will not die_ _yet_.”

Bokuto’s skin was a flat grey, veins purpling around his lips and eyes. The rest of his body was wracked with violent tremors that were closer to seizures than shivers. His hair had fallen back, revealing the too-wide expanse of his forehead. 

For once he looked terribly old,

Akaashi had never been good at healing. It was a water-based affair, the aspect of magic he had the least affinity for. Healing went beyond what magic seemed capable of, and in general was a casting antithetical to his natural inclination. It was one of empathy, of connecting and building an emotional bridge.

There were more bridges smoldering behind him than Akaashi had ever built. But perhaps here by the sea, a place not unlike the seaside village where Bokuto had been born, healing would come easier. Perhaps with Bokuto it would come easier

It did not particularly matter whether it would come easy or not, Akaashi was going to do it.

His staff was still a billhook; he had neither time to alter it nor the magic to spare. The sharp lapis sickle whistled in the wind as he brought it close, awkwardly balanced over the gash where the snake’s fang had sliced Bokuto’s arm.

In his mind he pieced together the spells for purification and mending. They were built of imagined concepts that could very well be memories: placid evening waves caressing the shore, a small campfire crackling at night, the gentle wind rippling through a field of ripe wheat. Waves upon waves. He spun the images together and let them hover as he drew out the remaining power from his broken finger.

And then he took more.

He squeezed his staff hard to stave off the shuddering tremors, his body’s protest as life was drained from it.

The tapestry of experiences in his mind was pristine. His childhood – remembered – in the fields, Bokuto’s childhood – imagined – among the waves. But the sheer emotion tied up in such dangerously intimate thoughts pressed against the back of his eyes. His skittish heart fought back, trying to destroy the spell. The screams of his sister as they cut away the dissolving remains of her foot echoed through his mind.

_This was why Akaashi was bad at healing…_

His memories roared. Imagined Bokuto grew into the real young man, chopping apart a statue of a beautiful woman, weeping inconsolably as he did so. Young Akaashi did not grow up, but he watched the destruction and did not stop it.

_…because his manifestation was destruction._

His fire did not burn, it dissolved. It created neither heat nor cold nor anything that could be used. Akaashi was nothing better than the void itself. The healing spell was going to collapse and Bokuto was going to die. In agony, confused, alone. Alone as Akaashi had left him...

 **No**.

He absolutely was not.

How ridiculous to think such a thing. Akaashi was far too old for such nonsense. Guilt and paranoia would save neither of them. How could he forget the one thing he told his students over and over and over again?

_The only thing that matters is this moment in time, and what you choose to do with it._

The spell slid free in his mind, a drop of dew gliding down a long blade of grass. It flowed into a gentle cascade of balmy power. Spilling down the wood in Akaashi’s hands, it trickled off the sickle’s blade, and dripped into Bokuto’s arm.

Bokuto’s seizing stopped. The wound stitched itself together, albeit sloppily. The grey in his skin was replaced with a pallor that said he was unwell, but unquestionably alive.

Akaashi fell backwards in the sand, clutching his staff to his chest. His relief, mingling with the side effects of such a risky casting caused him to tremble uncontrollably. His vision shimmered as though he was gazing through a great heat.

The last thing he would remember was that pulling someone back from the verge of death smelled of petrichor.

  

_“Well. So. Akaashi, this is probably obvious, but you’re not allowed to heal anyone anymore,” Saru cleared his throat._

_He’d set Bokuto on fire. At least it wasn’t his fire - Bokuto would be dead in that case - but the sort of fire that burned. He’d been trying so hard not to kill him accidentally, that a hiccup of flames had appeared instead. His first piece of fire magic. Small, but more than enough to do extensive damage._

_Konoha had ripped his own fingernail off - the most brutal, and really, the_ only _covenant Akaashi had ever seen. He’d summoned water, then had brought it within an inch of freezing. With that frigid water he’d soothed the blistering flesh on Bokuto’s back and then had healed him the best he could with the little magic that remained._

_After that he’d lost any real notion of reality, babbling nonsense. Washio had taken the delirious medic somewhere quiet to recover._

_Bokuto, other than losing a pair of trousers in the chaos was fine._

_Akaashi was decidedly not._

_“‘Kaashi looks pretty calm,” Komi poked him as though he wasn’t there._

_“I think that means he’s not,” Saru pushed Komi away then led Akaashi to the campfire. “Akaashi, sit down and drink some water. Or maybe something stronger?”_

_Akaashi couldn’t bring his legs to bend, but it didn’t matter, because a few seconds later Bokuto had swept him into his arms the way men carried their brides over the threshold._

_“I’m okay, Agaseee!” Bokuto pushed his face in close. “Just got a nasty scar now. Everybody’s gonna think I already fought a dragon. So it’s perfect.”_

_Akaashi started to shake for several reasons, all of them embarrassing._

_“Look,” Bokuto sat them both down, draping his blanket over Akaashi’s arms, then pulling down his tunic for modesty’s sake, “there’s only one way to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”_

_“I should never attempt this-”_

_“Wrong!” Bokuto cut him off. “It’s not hating yourself. It’s a lot better!” He grinned and kicked his feet, then slapped Akaashi on the back._

_“I’m gonna tell ya everything there is ta know about me.”_

_Akaashi was struck wordless._

_“For starters, I was born by the sea, up in the northwest. Have ya ever seen the sea, Akaashi? It’s the most beautiful thing in the world.”_

 

“Ya saved my life.”

Bokuto was leaning over him. It was difficult to see him exactly, as he was nothing but blackness: a hole cut out of a sky full of stars. But the Bokuto-shaped nothingness seemed to be waiting for a response.

“Barely.”

His thrice broken finger had been realigned and bound to its nearest neighbor, an activity Akaashi had not done himself.

“I saw ya fight that thing. And win. Although,” Bokuto’s awed tone dropped into something more arrogant, “seein’ as it was me who thought ta teach ya fighting, I guess maybe _I_ saved me.”

“Indeed. Congratulations, Bokuto, on singlehandedly rescuing yourself from a magic-resistant void beast living inside a giant water snake.”

Unexpectedly, Bokuto laughed.

“I am the best, ya know,” he wrapped his hand around Akaashi’s wrist and smoothly pulled him to his feet. It was an action he took without complaining in the slightest. It even seemed friendly. But any potential observations on this sudden change were smothered the moment Akaashi looked toward the water.

His words were stolen away.

Nothing could have prepared him for the sight of the shoreline, lined and speckled with an a strange substance.

A substance that was _glowing_. 

It seemed most focused around the flattened body of the snake, but glowing blue coated the rocks, the tideline, everything the water touched. It was bright enough to cast small shadows across the sand, illuminating the skittering movements of crabs and other night creatures. The glow ebbed with the rising tide, pushing the light back and forth in the waves.  Akaashi had spent forty years delving into the mysteries of magic, but this was the most mystical thing he’d ever seen.

He didn’t realize he’d been walking to the shore until the water lapped against his bare feet.

“They’re little squids,” Bokuto explained with childlike glee. “And this other muck that sometimes comes up with em. They make light somehow. Never seen this much at once, though, ‘specially not at this time of year. Must be after that thing ya killed.”

Akaashi was on the verge of turning to Bokuto and smiling. Smiling because he felt like smiling and because he wanted to smile with Bokuto specifically. But he held back. Such things were no longer allowed between them.

“Akaasheee, you’ve got snake guts in yer hair!” Bokuto guffawed, having no idea what he’d just missed.

“And you laugh like an old man,” Akaashi’s smirk was small and did not count as a smile, though it relieved some of the pressure to do so.

Bokuto dropped his jaw in feigned offense.

“I _am_ an old man!” his laughter rang again, short and harsh, then stopped abruptly.

Akaashi did not know how to fill the resulting pause. But Bokuto resolved the quiet with an uncharacteristically quiet chuckle. Perhaps the offense was less feigned than Akaashi thought.

“Ya don’t though, do ya?” his voice was low.

“No,” Akaashi acknowledged with some difficulty, “I suppose I don’t laugh particularly often.”

“Course,” Bokuto laughed again and threw out his hands, “I wouldn’t know somethin’ like that, would I?” He leaned back and crossed his arms as though he was very satisfied with himself.

It wasn’t the worst thing he’d said. Or maybe it was. Cruelty is difficult a thing to measure. Whatever its magnitude, the intention to hurt finally pierced Akaashi’s chest.

“Meanness doesn’t suit you,” he chided distantly. His heart was full to the brim with an icy pain that had built upon itself so much that it could no longer be contained.

There was a long stretch of quiet. Pain or no, he wanted to reabsorb his words and the vulnerability that came with them.

“Hate being mean,” Bokuto growled at the sand, kicking it a little. “Specially to you. Never wanted ta be that kinda person. Don’t think I’m s’posed ta be this kinda person. But here I am. A real son of a bitch.”

Akaashi thought that this would all be a great deal easier if that were true.

“I apologize,” he bowed, feeling the achy spot in his back flare to life. “You have done nothing wrong. Your reactions are just; I should not have implied otherwise.” The freezing in his chest did not decrease, but he had carried it for over four decades. It was something he could endure.

He turned and began walking along the glowing shoreline, no real idea of where he was going.

“Wait!” Bokuto chased after him, the sucking sound of his feet in the wet sand giving a good indication of his speed. “Ya always do this. Just take whatever anyone throws at you. Over and over, like you’re doing one of those trades. Fight back! Ya don’t always gotta be such a masochist.”

Pivoting on one foot to give a curt answer, Akaashi discovered that he was planted on a slippery glowing squid. The normally simple task of remaining upright emerged as just another challenge in his currently beleaguered life.

It had been forty years, one month, three days and six hours since he’d experienced intimately the strength that powered Bokuto’s expertise in combat.

He’d been carried on his back, certainly. But that was nothing compared to being caught, then lifted with no exertion whatsoever. It  was clear that Bokuto was even stronger than he'd been as a young man. He held Akaashi with a single arm the way he’d hold a child. They were pressed chest to chest, Akaashi’s toes just dipping into the sand. 

“Unfortunately,” Akaashi said as flatly as possible, “masochism is rather vital to my profession.”

But Bokuto wasn’t listening. Instead he was running the fingers of his free hand up Akaashi’s ribs, which he needed to stop doing immediately.

“You’ve lost at least a stone and you were always a beanpole to begin with,” he said, as though Akaashi had done either on purpose. The accusation was unnecessary in general and inappropriate for their current situation.

“I was just injured to the point of death, and the journey here was very challenging…”

“Agaasee!” Bokuto protested, worry laced through his irritation. “Ya don’t lose a stone in that short a time ‘less somethin’ bites off your arm!” 

“Bokuto...” his voice sounded so much more helpless than he wanted. They were face to face now, breath mingling, Bokuto holding him as though he picked up people whenever he felt the need. Their eyes met. Bokuto’s were softly glowing, but not from the sea creatures. It was the warm gold that had always reminded Akaashi of the fields of his childhood. His voice was soft as a summer wind, a true rarity.

Having other occasions of such softness to compare to the current situation hurt so badly Akaashi wanted to burn his ears away.

“I’m jus worried, ya know?” Bokuto ran his hand up Akaashi’s rib one last time. Gentler than before. He licked his lips, and they were chapped and full and Akaashi had never even gotten to–

“Can’t be good, being so skinny,” Bokuto’s finger grazed his cheek. He wasn’t even trying to hide the longing in his voice. “Do they even feed ya? Is yer wife hittin’ ya? Royal or not, Keiji, no one gets ta touch–”

“Let go of me!” Akaashi shouted, barely aware of doing so.

Bokuto dropped him in shock and Akaashi landed hard on the sand. His broken finger screamed at the impact. The sea so close to his ears drove away all sound, but it couldn’t keep Akaashi from looking up. Bokuto’s eyes shone in the steady glow from the water. They were sad.

And then they were blank. 

“I’ll finish settin’ up camp,” he murmured, all emotion gone from his voice.

The childish rage was gone. It was replaced by something much worse.

Nothing.

 

_“…and that’s how I tried to catch that boar with nothing more than my fists!” Bokuto guffawed. If they hadn’t been lying down in the middle of a fallow field already, he likely would have fallen to the ground from the mirth of his own tale. As it was, he just laughed himself out of breath, leaving a wide quiet space for Akaashi to do what he’d been trying to do all evening._

_“I apologize again for hurting your back,” he hurried out the words. “I will never try to heal you again. In the next town we have an extended stay, I will pay someone to make you new trousers.”_

_He had absolutely noting to pay with._

_Bokuto laughed again, “Now, I won’t say no to those trousers, but you’ll definitely heal me again,” He caught Akaashi’s hand and squeezed it. “I get hurt a lot and Konoha isn’t as strong as you. Wouldn’t be surprised if ya save my life some day, Akaashi. So don’t go saying ya won’t, cause that’s just incorrect.”_

_The prideful part of Akaashi, the part that bristled at being told what to do was easily drowned out by the whimsical side that found Boktuo’s words charming. That aspect of his personality was just as readily silenced by the relentlessly practical voice, which insisted that finding anything about Bokuto charming was a terrible idea._

_“So ya grew up in a place like this?” Bokuto gestured to the wide open space surrounding them._

_“Not particularly. This is just a farmed riverbed, there are forests and mountains around us.”_

_“So tell me what it’s like, Akaashi!”_

_The demand was annoying. And charming. And annoying._

_“Goldenfields,” Akaashi exhaled, “is surrounded by prairie. Imagine nothing but tall yellowed grasses as far as the eye can see. It lives up to its name. At night, when you see the stars, you can see them forever.”_

_Bokuto rolled on his side, “Akaashi, ya talk really pretty when you have a mind.”_

_Akaashi blushed, and the practical side of himself started throwing a very impractical tantrum._

_“Course, don’t think we don’t know that yer whole fine speech’s fake. Ya talk when you’re sleepin’, and damn if you don’t sound like Komi when he’s drunk. I just mean… ya think of pretty words. I’d never think ta say things like that.”_

_He wanted to explain that there had been people in town who had been different, elegant and well spoken and he had practiced since the moment he realized he didn’t sound like them. But, for once, he allowed himself to take the compliment without excuses._

_“Th-thank you,” his words were softer than intended._

_“Hey, Akaashi,” Bokuto’s voice was just as rough._

_“Yes?”_

_“I know when we get to the City you’ll be leavin’ us but I was just… promise you’ll come back? Even if it’s just for a little, in between trainin’? Really gotten used to havin’ ya about. Won’t be the same if ya go forever.”_

_Akaashi knew nothing about what being a mage entailed. He knew nothing of the training, of timetables, commitments, or any other requirement. But he knew his answer all the same._

_“I will.”_

 

The next morning they woke up on far sides of the tent. The damp that had run down the oilcloth walls in the night had lodged in Akaashi’s lungs. But it was his fault, sleeping in a way that seemed to counter all given sense. He knew better than to lean against a tent wall, and he’d done it anyway, being that desperate to put as much distance between him and Bokuto as possible.

For once, he had awoken first, probably out of discomfort more than anything else. He needed to cough, a cough of the deep, soul-wrecking sort, but doing so would wake Bokuto. For selfish reasons, he didn’t want that to happen quite yet, so he did his best to silently clamor out of the tent and onto the sand.

The sun was rising behind him, casting sharp pinks and oranges across the water. The lines of color were broken only by the flattened body of the snake, a stark reminder of their ongoing task. Akaashi coughed gracelessly into his shirt, barely muffling the sound. The air was just on the chilly side of bearable, but the sun that spilled across his shoulders warmed down into his bones.

He coughed again, feeling an ache rattle each of those same bones, and sat to meditate.

 

“Do ya ever do this and stay awake?” Bokuto asked. “Naps are just as good, and you can lay down when you take em.”

Akaashi fell backwards in surprise. He scattered sand as he tried to right himself. The argument could be made that he could sleep sitting up with ease, but that wasn’t a battle he chose to fight. It also didn’t make his recent inability to meditate any less disconcerting.

“I assure you I do so on a regular basis. This journey,” he tried not to babble and failed profoundly, “I’ve been ill, as you have certainly seen and I believe that perhaps my body seems to desire, or rather _need_ –”

“Nothin wrong with gettin’ a bit a sleep,” Bokuto held out his hand.

It hovered between them, thick and calloused and demanding attention. Akaashi reached up, and their fingers clasped around each other like a handshake. With a fluid motion, Akaashi was on his feet.

“I’m sorry, Akaashi,” was what came next.

The words were so far from what Akaashi expected to hear he nearly crashed down to the beach a second time.

Bokuto took his movements to be angry ones and rushed to explain. “Last night I uh, broke my own rule, talkin’ about things I shouldn’t. And yer right, ya know. I’ve been mean as a…” he waved at the ever-present carcass, “stepped-on snake, and that’s not who Koutarou Bokuto is. He’s not too smart, maybe, but he’s not s’posed to be this mean. Don’t think I can do it a second more.”

He smiled and held out his hand again, “So whaddya say, Akaashi? Truce, for now? We can go back to hating each other when we make it out alive.”

“I’ve never…” Akaashi started, then caught himself. “Alright then, Bokuto. Truce.”

 

 _Akaashi_ _had no idea how to use his magic in a fight. Rather, he had no idea how to use it without brutally massacring the person he was fighting. Since he had no desire to kill, he was put in the precarious position of fighting a somewhat grizzled bandit in hand to hand combat._

_A skill he had just acquired._

_The man smelled, so Akaashi tried to keep him downwind. That was about the best he could manage._

_It was almost certain that fighting with an axe as a weapon was likely to end in some fatalities, but Bokuto seemed to be doing a fine job of smacking their assailants over the head with the flat side of the axehead. His control was rather spectacular considering he was naked and dripping in his own blood._

_The bandits had found them, or rather, they’d found Bokuto while he was bathing in a hot spring a scant two minutes’ walk from their camp. Despite what would turn out to be a messy but shallow sword wound, he was knocking them out in a flurry of precise chaos._

_Komi cared a lot less if he injured the people who were currently trying to kill them. Almost casually, he’d sliced through the tendons that allowed their assailants to stand. Konoha and Washio were swiping legs out from under whoever came near, then kicking them in the stomach. Saru was happy to lean on his sword and watch until he was needed._

_Akaashi ended up facing the last man standing. Because he’d yet to win. Feeling a deep sense of humiliation at the time it had taken him to bring down his assailant, he summoned a gust of wind that slammed his personal bandit into a nearby tree._

_His first successful execution of air magic: completely accidental and based in rage._

_“I’d urge you to take a bath,” he told the unmoving body at his feet, trying to hold himself together._

 

The village was covered in voidcrows. It was hard to even define it as a village anymore, there were that many birds roosting on the thatch of the cottages. They left scorch marks instead of droppings, giving the place a half-burnt appearance.

They had made it so far from the sea with so little trouble that Akaashi was almost relieved for such an annoyance to interrupt the polite, but distant atmosphere that had been established between the two of them. They rarely talked. When they did Bokuto was kind, but he neither asked nor gave in their interactions. Akaashi was committed to mirroring his behavior, so semi-pleasant silence reigned over the seething tension underneath.

“These blasted things,” Bokuto muttered under his breath. “Got about five in Catseye three springs back and Shibayama near ta died trying to kill em by himself.”

Shibayama had not told Akaashi that. Perhaps if he had, Akaashi would have shown him more aggressive spells instead of the sort befitting a baker.

“Where do they even come from?” Bokuto went on. “My granny, she said she never saw these kinda nightmares until my da was born, and she was a sailor afore she settled down with my pap.”

“It’s… a tale; nothing but the sort told around a fire,” Akaashi murmured. He was conflicted. It was not particularly wise to chat in such a precarious position but he felt nothing but relief for having something they could actually discuss. “It’s best we deal with these creatures before spending time in speculation.”

Bokuto turned to make eye contact. And then he smiled, the lines around his eyes crinkling up tight. Akaashi could still see the youth in his weathered face, and he found the composition pleasing.

“I’ll hold ya to that, Akaashi,” he stood up from the rock they were hiding behind. Akaashi was forced to stand as well, despite being completely unprepared to do so.

“Speaking to you like this is strange but pleasant,” he admitted despite very much not wanting to do so.

Bokuto grinned wider. He didn’t need to know about the surge of power that flowed through Akaashi’s body.

 

Voidcrows were too weak to live in the world of the living and too strong to stay in the void. They hovered on the border of both. Alone they could not easily kill a man, but they brought pestilence wherever they went. The weak  who encountered them were often struck with lifelong illness. In a flock, they could easily bring down an entire village with disease and decay.

Akaashi hoped Bokuto had known that they could be brought down by physical blows before he rushed into the fray. There was little question that Bokuto was strong enough to withstand their toxic influence, but Akaashi would have preferred a more solid plan of attack.

For a mage, a simple arrow spell would do. The first offensive spell any mage learned, there was one for every element except earth. And except Akaashi’s. His own master had said that his magic was, “purified nothingness, nothing more.” But despite such encouragement from the former bearer of his own title Akaashi had taught himself to make arrows out of his bewildering “non-magic.”

At the first ringing crunch of metal against bone, Akaashi prepared to draw on the covenanted magic to cast a truly tremendous flurry of arrows, one that would clear out the entire murder of crows. But another sound stayed his hand.

Bokuto was giggling. Or snickering perhaps. Giggling seemed outside of the purview of men of a certain age. All the same, it was a delightful noise, and Akaashi did not want to stop it.

The flock took to the air and several of them descended at the same time on the offensive. With an easy swing of his axe, Bokuto sliced through them all. His snickering had grown into full-blown laughter which probably terrified whoever was still inside the cottages they were trying to liberate.

“Show me whatcha got, Akaashi!” he called. “I’ve already killed eleven of the bastards. Beat that!”

The tension shattered.

There was no arguing with friendly competition. With a deep breath, Akaashi pushed the covenanted magic down, for later use. His own magic, easily accessed was far above average but still nothing in comparison to what a covenant would bring.

At maximum, he could make twenty arrows.

He’d have to take down more than one per shot if he were to win.

Bokuto was having the time of his life. He was blissfully unconcerned to be surrounded by a flock of creatures eager to poison him until he passed out and they could feast on his flesh. He moved with the sort of agility that made Akaashi’s secondary task of not shooting him very difficult.

The first volley of purple arrows downed one crow apiece. They fell to the ground, and the void part of their existence dissolved, leaving half a skeleton behind. Bokuto stepped on one with an unexpected crunch and jumped into the air in surprise.

Akaashi’s hoarse bark of laughter rang through the air before he could catch it.

Bokuto spun around, holding his axe like he’d forgotten how to carry it. A goofy grin was on his face, and he opened his mouth to say something just as a crow flew into the side of his head.

With another whispered spell, Akaashi shot a hole through the crow and the one behind it. The barb of ice shattered against the wooden wall of the cottage. The unstable piece of void left over flickered in and out of existence, then disappeared completely.

“That’s nine, my Lord Bokuto,” Akaashi said smugly.

“I told ya not to call me that,” Bokuto grunted in annoyance, unable to hid the smile in his eyes. He tossed his axe into his other hand, and with a swing over his back, shredded half a dozen crows out of existence.

And so it went.

 

_“Well met, Suguru Daishou,” Saru said, crossing his arms. His voice was tinged with an amusement that was hiding what might have been a bit of real unease._

_Bokuto would normally have relished this sort of introduction, but he was sleeping off the half-baked healing that Konoha had been able to manage. Akaashi had tried, but his trembling hands hadn’t even been able to hold his staff, let alone heal Bokuto’s back._

_Now both Konoha and Bokuto were fast asleep in the tents where the fracas with the bandits had taken place. The rest of the band was standing in front of a thin man in a high-necked green double. His hair was severely parted and a devious look was on his face._

_“Yamato,” the man crossed his arms. “I see you’re doing some work for once. Is Tetsurou with you? Or is it just that oaf with an axe?”_

_Akaashi’s hands clenched around his staff._

_“S’cuse me… uh… milord?” Komi took a few steps forward, his hands on the daggers around his waist. “But nobody gets ta call the boss an oaf ‘cept us.”_

_Washio picked him up by the collar and sat him back down at his side._

_“Indeed, Haruki. And I see you’ve all made your way up in the world. Have yourselves a real mage and everything. Or,” he looked Akaashi’s staff up and down, “perhaps not real just quite yet.”_

_“SUGURU,” a sweet, but incredibly angry voice cried out from a near distance. The crowd that had gathered to welcome them parted urgently as another mage, a real mage, stepped forward._

_A heavily pregnant one._

_She was, up until that point, the most beautiful woman Akaashi had ever seen, with long auburn hair and soft, kind eyes. Even through her anger, they were gentle. And the severe, devious man melted under her gaze._

_“Mika,” he breathed, as though he hadn’t seen her in a thousand years._

_He was summarily ignored, “I apologize for my husband’s suspicious behavior.”_

_“Oh, it’s fine,” Saru waved it off. “We know him from our days in the Garrison.”_

_Mika laughed, tossing her hair. “If so, then I apologize doubly. Thank you for freeing us from those bandits. They’ve been harassing travelers for a month. We are a peaceful town with no protector save myself. And,” she pointed at her stomach, “you can see that I am not as light on my feet as I might be.”_

_“It was no trouble,” Akaashi spoke up. “We were pleased to help.”_

_“Trouble or no, tonight we feast in your honor. Won’t we, Suguru?”_

_“Of course, my love.”_

_For the first time since Akaashi had met him, Washio smiled._

_At least three women threw themselves at him. Based on the size of the town and the attractiveness ascribed to him, it was a very small number, but to Akaashi it seemed truly enormous. He had no idea what to do with them, and his companions were no help._

_They were the most relaxed he’d ever seen them. Konoha and Daishou were engaged in a bout of competitive storytelling, while Washio and Komi were having a drinking contest with several of the townsfolk. Mika and Saru were in deep conversation over some topic that no one else seemed to care about._

_And Bokuto?_

_If Akaashi was overwhelmed by women, Bokuto was drowning_ _in them. One by one they danced with him in the town square, all to the sounds of a lively troupe of traveling musicians. They were led by a robust young woman with short blonde hair. She was egging Bokuto on, playing familiar songs that best fit his light-footed still of dance._

_Akaashi had no idea how to dance outside of the rustic dances of his hometown. But he did have the self respect to give Bokuto a bit of privacy, instead of staring at him with jealous eyes._

_Taking his leave of the beautiful women who were offering anything from fine wines to back massages to more daring, explicit forms of entertainment, he turned on his heels and returned to camp._

“Hana, my sweet, these men have fought hard for us, it’s only right that we celebrate!”

It was impossible to tell the village elder’s age. He carried himself with the wild earnestness of a seventeen-year-old. His hair was shockingly white and shaved so there was nothing but a slicked back crest at the top of his head. His face was weathered by more smile lines than anyone Akaashi had ever seen in his life. His tunic was shockingly yellow, a color many of the villagers were wearing in one form or another. Altogether, he could have been forty or eighty, it was impossible to say.

“They looked to be laughing more than fighting,” his wife replied, raising a gloriously thick eyebrow into her steel grey hair. She was equally ageless, with youthful skin but a severe demeanor that assigned her years she might not have actually possessed.

“Ah,” Bokuto scratched the back of his head, axe still in hand, the haft nearly hitting Akaashi in the face. “Yeah, well, y’see, it’s been a long time since the two of us’ve fought together so we maybe got carried away a bit.”

“The real question is,” the elder grinned, “who won the little contest you were having.”

“It was a tie,” Akaashi grumbled bitterly.

“Well, then, we can celebrate both of you equally! I’m Terushima, Yuuji Terushima, and this is my wife, Hana. Wander’s Rest is just a little speck of a place, but we know how to show our guests a good time! It’s not often we get adventurers past a certain age, you know.”

He winked.

His wife glared at him, “A restful time, Yuuji .”

“Well, my beautiful snowflake, why don’t we ask our guests just what it is that they want?”

“Can rest when I’m dead,” Bokuto grinned.

Akaashi felt certain that the two of them should not have met.

 

“You promised, Agaashee!” Bokuto complained, pulling him close to the fire.

“I did nothing of the sort,” Akaashi grunted as his backside made aggressive contact with the ground.

Terushima had not been lying when he said that Wander’s Rest knew how to show visitors a good time. There were small fires all circling a huge bonfire, where the townspeople happily danced. Strawberry wine flowed like water, and an enormous pig was roasting. Around the small fire where they sat with Terushima, his wife, and a few young folks he and Bokuto were touching, knee to knee.

“You promised to tell me where the void creatures came from!” Bokuto poked him violently, knocking their knees together even harder. “And I told Teru, and all these good people that cha would. Are you gonna make a fool out of me?”

Akaashi sighed, “I am neither a storyteller nor a loremaster. It will not be a well-told tale.” 

His audience didn’t seem concerned. In fact, Bokuto moved closer, leaving their legs touching up to the mid-thigh.

“Over a hundred years ago,” Akaashi began stiffly, more to get his mind off their positioning than out of any actual readiness to tell a story, “there was a young mage.”

“It’s always those mages,” Hana shook her head, with a wry smile at Akaashi.

“Yes. We do cause a great deal of trouble,” he smiled back, feeling more at ease. His words sounded benign, a platitude he’d give out to strangers when he ran out of things to say.

“This mage was fascinated with the origins of magic. Covenants were destroying the world, too many mages maiming themselves in their greed for power. Who knows what it was that drove him to his research. Sheer numbers of those injured? A single lost sister?”

Perhaps he was getting too personal.

“Whatever it was, he’d had enough.”

His audience was already staring in rapt attention, unlikely to interrupt, so there was no excuse for delay.

“So… erm… the mage began researching all the ways he could potentially create alternative sources of magic. He focused on the vidis, since earth magic does not function as other magics do.”

“Sure would like to meet one of them someday,” Teru sighed. Akaashi imagined Kenma meeting such a man and nearly spat up his wine.

“Describing his research is unnecessarily tedious,” Akaashi went on, “suffice it to say: the mage decided that in order to understand the vidis better, he’d have to do just as you say, Terushima. Meet one. He traveled to a nearby country where it is said vidis are as common as fire mages.”

In the middle of a drink, Bokuto coughed violently, spilling his wine all over himself.

“Are you alright,” the young woman next to him asked. She touched his arm with excessive gentleness, and Akaashi felt his spine catch on fire.

“While there, he fell in love with a young woman with soft white myrtle in her hair,” Akaashi continued forcefully.

Next to him, Bokuto murmured something to the woman. She laughed lightly and Akaashi was forced to chase down his train of thought.

“For a time, the man forgot his quest. The couple had a child, and he grew into a strong, noble man.”

Bokuto wasn’t even paying attention now, despite his earlier desperation to hear. Akaashi grasped at the grass, and felt the stems dissolve in his fingers.

“Their son was killed on a journey by a bandit who had plucked out his eye to form a covenant. Despite being both older and wiser than he had once been, the mage became obsessed with the idea that had once inspired him.”

“Yeah?” Bokuto leaned on him, the woman at his side still vying for his attention. “So what happened?”

“In a moment of hypocritical insanity, he sacrificed his beloved wife, making a covenant in her blood,” Hana and Terushima gasped. Akaashi purposely ignored Bokuto’s reaction, whatever it was.

“Human sacrifice had been tried by others, but this was the first time it succeeded. Perhaps it was because she was a vidis. Perhaps it was the purity of their love. Either way, the man ripped open the way to the void, it’s said. But instead of a flood of magic that any and all could share, he let loose the void creatures. Including the-”

The woman stood up and pulled Bokuto up with her. Akaashi tried not to watch, but in moments they were dancing around the fire.

He downed his entire mug of wine, story left unfinished.

 

_“Oi, Akaashi! Don’t you wanna, you know?” Bokuto gestured at the woman under his arm as the two of them stumbled into camp. She was a good ten years older than he was, and outrageously beautiful._

_She did not appreciate being gestured at like  a piece of meat up for purchase. After slapping her tipsy escort, she scoffed at their meagre lodgings and turned on her heels back towards the town._

_“Insult a striking woman and then get slapped?” Akaashi asked, reading over the intricacies of storing covenanted magic. Or attempting to do so, considering the dim firelight and his limited reading comprehension._

_Bokuto didn’t seem to mind his loss much. He crashed down beside Akaashi in an avalanche of skin, bone and muscle, all smelling mildly of beer. “I meant find someone to cozy up to. Lotsa pretty women in this town… saw some talking to you, in fact…”_

_All of the other members of their company were still reveling. Perhaps with the abundance of pretty women._

_There were many dignified responses, but “I’ve not been with a woman before…” was not one of them._

_“Well I can help you with that!” Bokuto looked much less thrilled than his voice implied. “You’re handsome and smart and you have so much magic without even having to do that creepy shit where you hurt yourself! Girls’ve been lookin you up and down since we got here. Just need ta learn how to talk to them.”_

_As though he knew how._

_“I also have no desire to be with a woman.”_

_Bokuto didn’t seem to understand. “Akaashi, I like you, but if you have a taste for lil girls I’m gonna take your head off right here.”_

_“Absolutely not.”_

_“Oh!” Bokuto’s sigh of relief nearly put out the fire. “Then you’re just… c-celi..fit? for your magic? Or one of them who doesn’t care for sex, maybe? Or maybe it’s–”_

_“I favor the company of men,” Akaashi muttered into the fire in hopes of stopping the maddening speculation. It was a misleading statement in a way, since he’d never been with a man either. But he wanted to. Very much._

_And also very specifically_

_Nothing was said for a long time. It wasn’t as though men didn’t live together openly. However, it was less common, and as such treated with the same accepting wariness that ignorant folks treat anything they’re unused to. Akaashi expected the worst._

_But when he finally gathered the courage to turn his head, Bokuto was staring at the fire, his eyes wide and terrified in a way that seemed to have little to do with immediate fears of Akaashi doing something untoward._

_“So, you can do it then, with a man?” he asked softly. “I mean, I always kinda… had a little tickle of a thought with Kuroo and Kenma and, you know, I kinda… but I never really…”_

_Akaashi worried his fingers, unsure of how to answer. “Yes. You can. Or so I’ve been told. I’ve never…”_

_“So you’re just a virgin, either way!” Bokuto turned to him, still a much gentler version of himself, “I’d a thought someone pretty as you coulda been with lots of folks by now.”_

_“Though they weren’t opposed to my existence, no one seemed to share my preferences in Goldenfields. Well, there were a few but I imagine the fact that any one of them could have been my grandfather made me rather undesirable.”_

_Bokuto threw his head back and laughed with undisguised relief. “Ah, Akaashi I just never thought that ya could, ah… you know?” He took a deep breath than asked in a near whisper, “I mean, can ya like both?”_

_“I don’t believe anyone is stopping you.”_

_Their faces had gotten closer. Bokuto looked wild in the firelight, his eyes dancing, their gold shattered into a dozen other colors by the flames. He still smelled of the beer they’d been drinking. Good beer, dark and heady._

_“Or, stopping any person,” Akaashi cleared his throat to clarify._

_Bokuto moved closer, and Akaashi could smell the faintest hint of his sweat, of his leathers, and the mint he chewed constantly._

_“I uh, meant me,” his voice was gravely and shy. “Have you ever kissed anyone, then?”_

_“No,” Akaashi whispered._

_“Interested in havin’ a try?”_

_He didn’t answer verbally, just leaned in and hoped that Bokuto’s practice with gorgeous older women would make up for his own inexperience. A strong, calloused hand touched the back of his neck ever so gently. Much more gently than he’d touched that woman. Much more gently than Akaashi had ever seen Bokuto touch anything. He brought their foreheads together, and took a deep shuddery breath._

_“Wish I woulda asked ya about this awhile back,” he said huskily._

_Their lips ghosted across each other’s and…_

_“HEY BOSS!”_

_They pulled apart so quickly Akaashi nearly lost his book to the fire. Bokuto put all of his energy into pulling it out and beating out the flames._

_“Saw that Clover you were charming stomp back into the village, kick down a fence, then start drinking and laughing with her friends,” Saru grinned with a sparkle in his eye. “Guess things didn’t work out so well then?”_

_Komi wiggled in-between them and plopped himself down on the ground, one arm around each of them. “Good thing you had Akaashi here to distract you eh? It’s a wonder he’s so patient with drunk idiots eh?”_

_Behind them Konoha laughed too long and too loud for someone who had no idea what he had walked in on._

_Bokuto protested, but his heart wasn’t in it, and after some time he was drinking and laughing again._

_Much later, as he lay in his bedroll, Akaashi reminded himself that the man had been both drunk and rejected by a woman he’d intended to bed. Perhaps to take this near miss seriously would be dangerous._

_Although a kiss would have been nice._

 

“Enough stories,” Hana stood. “Akaashi, please dance with me,” she held out her hand. “We would be terrible hosts indeed if both our guests didn’t enjoy our hospitality to the fullest.”

There was little he could say to protest, though he tried all the same. “But your husband, milady…”

She chuckled, “He likes to watch.”

 

Akaashi had danced in elaborate carols that circled hand in hand through the gardens in the High Estates. He had danced the quiet hand-pressed rondeaux at his wedding and other formal occasions. He had danced quietly and with restraint for the past forty years.

But dancing arm in arm around a fire was something he’d done since he could stand. Such a thing was never forgotten, and it would be a lie to say he hadn’t longed for it.

Hana was small and her elbow strained to hook with his. “Now,” she declared, standing on her tiptoes and calling up to him, “I am interested in seeing how the Lord Magister dances.”

Seeing his shock, she continued, “You’ve enough magic to raze the village and rebuild it. I saw your hands burning purple. There’s only two mages like you, it’s said, and you’re much too old to be anyone but yourself.” She grinned, “And I plan to make an ass of such a fancy man as you around this fire.”

“You kin try,” the affect fell from his voice as he leaned down to whisper, “but I dun think this is the sorta thing ya forget too easy.”

She gasped, a huge smile on her face, and he pulled her into the circle.

Rhythmic chaos, pulling and swinging, moving from partner to partner from skipping step to skipping step. He spun with women and men, young and old, even children some of whom he picked up and put on his hip, just as he’d been picked up as a child. The steady beat of the drum, the sound of the reed and pipes, roared through his blood, headier than the wine.

He found himself in the arms of the blonde woman who had taken Bokuto away from the fire. Seeing something in his face, she lifted her thick eyebrows then winked at him before spinning away leaving him just a few steps off beat.

The avalanche of out of sync bodies colliding together could only involve one other person. Akaashi was too lanky and Bokuto too broad to easily catch themselves and jump back into the dance. As it was, Bokuto’s thick hands at the small of his back were the only things that kept them from careening into the fire.

The same hands pulled them tight together, chest to chest, with the thrumming sound of the drum muted by the sound of their own blood in their ears. The dancing had not stopped. Couples around them spun, pressing them closer and closer together. Bokuto was breathless and made of lightning and Akaashi was uncertain if he’d had any breath to begin with, or if he was nothing but ether. He laughed, because the night was wild and they were alive and tomorrow or any day after they might be dead. Bokuto’s smile cracked the earth in half and sewed it back together.

Akaashi wasn’t certain who kissed who first.

All he knew was that it had been worth a lifetime of waiting.

 

 _There_ _was nothing special about the forest._

_At least to Akaashi, who had spent such little time among the trees that he had no idea what an abnormal forest felt like. It clung to the side of the roots of the mountain, full of caves and waterfalls. Not content to rest, it slid down into the valley below, only to crawl up the mountain on the other side._

_He and his companions clung to the mountainside themselves, keeping unnaturally quiet. At one point Washio had led them silently past sentries from a Garrison outpost. There was a tightness in the air, which Akaashi misinterpreted as frustration. He felt responsible somehow, and that responsibility was what guided his decision._

_“Bokuto,” he exhaled, “it’s time you come to terms with reality: there’s no such thing as a dragon.”_

_The entire company stopped dead in their tracks._

_“Well…” Saru was the first to speak, “he’s not wrong, Boss.”_

_“Sure wish there was, though!” Komi added unhelpfully. He sounded more worried than cheerful, which was strange._

_“We should leave,” Washio grunted. As Akaashi considered it, the archer had been uncharacteristically assertive the entire journey through the forest, redirecting them to different paths at least once every hour._

_Boktuo turned on them, eyes desperate. “Y’all heard the rumors, same as me. Something’s burning up these mountains. Burning em up till there’s nothing left. Even the Garrison knows, that’s why they built that huge tower.”_

_“Akaashi could burn up the these mountains till there’s nothing left. Don’t make him a dragon,” Konoha shrugged. “I know you need something to fight, Bokuto, but maybe we should fight something real.”_

_“It is **real** ,” Bokuto insisted. “I’ve got a feeling about it, and my feelings aren’t ever wrong.”_

_“Like the bath you took with those bandits,” Konoha shot back._

_“Like Akaashi,” Bokuto crossed his arms. “I said we should bring him along, and he’s the best thing that ever happened to us.”_

_“You,” Konoha took several steps forward along the ridge. They were steadily approaching a promontory that overlooked the bluff, and Konoha was now closer than any of them to seeing what was ahead. “Not gonna say I don’t love the guy, but he’s the best thing that ever happened to **you** , Koutarou. For the rest of us, **you’re** that best thing. And we don’t want to see you die chasing something that can’t be fought.”_

_“It’s not a dragon,” Saru said again, nervousness clear in his voice. “Kou, I think it’s- think it’s something…”_

_Washio stepped forward and put his hand on his shoulder “It’s something worse.”_

_That hadn’t been what Akaashi had thought at all. A fool’s errand, that was all this had been. A distraction on his way to the city. But now what was it?_

_Konoha turned in frustration and the stiffening of his back was the last Akaashi ever saw of him._

 

The forest was terrifyingly unfamiliar.

His chest was heaving, more from anxiety and pain than any exhaustion. The light between the trees was nearly nonexistent and he had left his staff in their lodgings, like an amateur. He felt like a child, running from his inevitable punishment.

“ _Akaashi!_ ”

He wanted a new name. A name that he could run away with. Alone, with Bokuto, it didn’t matter, he just wanted to escape Akaashi Keiji. He’d been a prisoner of this name for forty years and he just wanted to escape.

Such thoughts were ridiculous enough for him to trip over a tree root while thinking them and landing straight on his face. The taste of iron dripped from his nose, and he couldn’t stand up because he couldn’t find solid ground amongst the tree roots.

It wasn’t particularly surprising that Bokuto picked him up. Less surprising, probably, than Akaashi running away in the first place.

They kissed again. This time more violent, with Akaashi’s blood running into his mouth, and no doubt coating Bokuto’s lips. Their teeth clacked together like novices, and Akaashi found his back pressed against the bole of the tree, his hands scrabbling for purchase on Bokuto’s back.

And then it was over.

Bokuto pulled away, and Akaashi slid down, his feet touching the root-ridden ground. In the dim light, he could see broad shoulders bowing over, shuddering.

“Bokuto… I…”

“We can’t do this. Never again,” Bokuto growled.

Of all things, Akaashi hadn’t expected that.

“Ya have a wife,” Bokuto forced out the words. “I _won’t_. It’s wrong.”

Oh.

“That doesn’t matter,” Akaashi whispered. “She… doesn’t mind…”

He expected another passionate kiss to result from the rush of movement. Instead, Bokuto’s fist slammed into the tree, his voice harsh in Akaashi’s ear.

“If it doesn’t matter, _why’s it been forty years_ , Keiji?”

The number cut like a knife. Akaashi had no words to explain. The drying blood was sealing his mouth shut.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t save him,” Bokuto went on, as though he’d discovered the real reason. “Keiji, I’m sorry, I think about him every day, but ya can’t hold it against me for all these years and then come runnin’ back when you still have a wife.”

“It’s not about that. It was never…” Akaashi’s voice cut through Bokuto’s blubbering. “The fact that he’s gone, has little to do with the intricacies of my relationship with my wife. Or… anything else.”

“But he’s _dead,_ Keiji,” Bokuto was weeping. “He’s dead an’ it was my idea that got him killed in the first place. Ya saw that thing turn him into nothing, ya saw it with your own eyes.”

“You think I didn’t see? You think I don’t know what we have to kill all over again?”

 

 _Konoha_ _was dead._

_A tendril of nothingness had wrapped itself around him, and he had turned to dust._

_With a blast of wind, Akaashi had thrown Washio, Komi, and Saru far behind him. Washio had clung to a tree, but Komi and Saru had fallen off of the ridge, rolling down the steep mountainside, deep into the forest. They might have been injured, perhaps even severely, but they were as far from the creature as possible._

_If it could be called a creature._

_It was as tall as the Garrison observation tower, and wider than four carts laid end to end. Blacker than night, blacker than anything, with fragments of reality coming into existence across the enormous expanse of dark like impossible targets. As they watched, it constricted in on itself, until the outline of Konoha was clearly visible while the very dust of his existence blew in little eddies at the monstrosity’s feet._

_Akaashi retched. Bile splattered against his boots and the dusty ground around him. A few feet away, Bokuto was openly weeping, his axe hanging limp in his hand. He fell to his knees, dust sticking to his fingers, leaving trails of white as he pulled them through his hair._

_In front of them, the void raged. Behind it was nothingness, a vast scar cut through the forest, the edges lined with still-living trees curled backwards, their leaves a sickly yellow-green._

_Such power._

_He needed a covenant. Akaashi’d never even made one before. He had no idea how, other than pictures from a book he could only half read._

_Yanking his knife out of his boot, he was poised to slice open his forearm, when it struck him that such an injury would be little sacrifice. He would be hardly affected, as long as it was properly treated. Nothing, nothing at all in his life would change. The pitiable amount of power such a covenant would give would be worthless._

_But there were other kinds._

_“Get up and fight, Koutarou.”_

_Bokuto wept, as though he had never seen death before. Even as a soldier, had he ever seen the terror in someone’s eyes as death took them? Bokuto was gentle, a man made to support a family, a community, not go to war._

_And yet to war he’d taken himself._

_“Koutarou, get up!” Akaashi shouted, gritting his teeth, “I promise, my heart can no longer survive without you.”_

_This was not when, this was not where, this was not  how, this was not why Akaashi wanted to make his confession. But as the power filled every muscle, every sinew, every inch of his existence, he knew that nothing else would have sufficed._

_Bokuto stood up, the fires of hell in his eyes. Behind them was the plink of an arrow strung in Washio’s bow._

_“Tell me what to do, Keiji,” Bokuto growled, tears running down his face. “I can’t remember.”_

_The creature was still in Konoha’s shape, and then it exploded into giant nothingness, bigger than anything Akaashi had ever seen._

_“Don’t worry…”_

_He stepped forward and tilted back his head, feeling the power thrum through his body, crackling from finger to finger in trails of lightning so dark it was nearly black._

_“Don’t think about anything…”_

_With a snap of his finger, Washio’s arrow was on fire, but a slow-burning inky aubergine that ate through the wood slow enough to aim._

_“Just fight the way you know how…”_

_He forced the magic in his body into the head of his staff, pulling one hand away to create an arc of sparkling deep purple lightning._

_“And we’ll be sure to clear a path for you.”_

 

The soldiers came the next morning to find an entire town passed out in piles around the smoldering remnants of a bonfire. Everyone but the town’s two guests, who were sitting across from each other, each on one side of a still burning fire.

They were feeble with lack of sleep, eyes red-rimmed. Akaashi’s nose was swollen and his eyes were likely purpled with bruises. As though he’d been in a fight, despite his age. Bokuto had cried so much he looked completely hung over.

Their fight had been nearly incoherent, full of accusations for things that neither of them could control and apologies for the same. Bokuto had spent much of the time in tears, and Akaashi found he did not have the emotional fortitude to talk him out of his misery.

The scene overall was a mess, a fact of which the soldiers were well aware. There were three: one tall and broad with hair so blonde it shone white, one with a face like a fox, and one who seemed to be enjoying his first day on the job. They observed the scene with unique emotions: the first, impassively; the second, with a spark of mischief in his eyes; and the third, with childlike excitement.

Terushima was somehow still conscious, despite the number of bottles scattered around his fire. He and Hana had been sitting quietly at dawn when Akaashi and Bokuto had emerged from the forest, then gave them privacy. Or at least the illusion of such. He emerged from his cottage at first sight of the soldiers as though he’d been watching out of the window, waiting for something to happen.

“My good sirs,” he bowed with very little deference, “what brings the members of Datay Company to Wander’s Rest? We have no business with your commander.”

“Don’t worry old geezer,” the fox-faced man grinned. “Wine kept out of your tribute is no business of ours, as long as it makes it’s way to the Wall.” He gestured at Akaashi and Bokuto. “We’re here for those two. My dear gentlemen, I hate to say it, but-”

 

_“You’re coming with us, boys.”_

_It was impossible for that much magic to illuminate the mountainside and be missed by the Garrison mages. But who were these soldiers talking to? Washio had been thrown down the mountain along with Komi and Saru. Akaashi didn’t know how to find them._

_And Konoha… Konoha was dead and Akaashi wanted to die._

_His mind had slowed with a heaviness that came with pain and grief. There were no words on his tongue to respond. Just dust and burns and entire pieces of his fingers were crumbling away. He’d been drained of so much magic that his joints no longer felt capable of movement._

_At his side, Bokuto was unconscious, trails of blood dripping from his eyes and ears. His skin was impossibly pale, delicate like the skin of an onion, but splattered with the deepest bruises._

Healer _, he thought blearily._ Koutarou needs a healer, _but the words wouldn’t come. The urgency alone sat him up. The soldiers jumped, looking at him like he had suddenly sprouted an additional eye._

_“You’re telling me ya survived that?” one of them sputtered._

_With a shuddering breath and a dizzied head, Akaashi asked the first thing he could verbalize._

_“We’re alive?”_


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops this story is now five chapters long. i had to change the chapter titles to accommodate

_Akaashi_ _fluttered in and out of consciousness. He knew that they had left the battlefield. He vaguely understood that his hands had been saved by a young medic with close cropped hair. He was more aware of the outpost’s chief healer - a old man - who had sat down in the middle of the forest and pushed Bokuto’s internal organs back inside him where they belonged. He knew little beyond that, least of all their destination._

_But wherever they were going, Konoha was still dead. The rest of their party was scattered, perhaps gravely injured, or even dead themselves. Akaashi tried to tell his rescuers this, but his accent was thick and his words wandered and they did not understand him._

_What the soldiers assigned to them **did** understand was that the mysterious scourge of the southeast had been defeated by two young men with no title or reputation whatsoever. Had Akaashi been conscious to see, he would have noticed the near reverence with which he and Bokuto were treated by the muscular woman with cherry-colored hair and her very tall, freckled air mage companion - the two soldiers who had discovered them in the first place._

_As they traveled far beyond what was necessary to return to the outpost, the slowly multiplying contingent of Garrison soldiers, mages, and medics tried to celebrate this victory with the finest ales, the most tender meats, and the freshest fruits and vegetables. But the fact remained that Akaashi’s companions were lost or dead and Bokuto might very well not make it through alive._

_For once in his life, Akaashi had little appetite._

_The man who welcomed them to the City was probably tall and ugly. It was hard to be certain because he was sitting on a large, wizened horse, which increased his characteristics tremendously. The man was unnaturally thin with shocking red hair that stood up despite obvious attempts to tame it. His name was given and just as quickly forgotten._

_He looked like a denizen of the underworld, if such a placed existed._

_They were moved from the dusty Garrison wagons to something more befitting heroes, and thus Akaashi’s introduction to the place he had traveled so far to find came from in-between the curtains in a closed coach._

_There was no moment spent in a tavern paying a neighborhood scribe to write a letter to his parents. There was no navigating bustling crowds until he reached the official school for healing and magics. There was no moment of revelation, when a more knowledgeable mage would show him just what his purple fire was. Show him that he was not, in fact, alone._

_There was nothing like that._

_But it was even trade for Bokuto’s murmured words as he finally woke._

_The High Estates were unlike anything Akaashi had ever dreamt of. At Bokuto’s request, they had been moved to an uncovered carriage where they sat, Akaashi’s weak, clawed hand in Bokuto’s trembling one. They watched as the monolithic town-within-a-town emerged, more than either had expected._

_It was walled, but behind it shone enormous turrets, both decorative and defensive. Bright copper roofs gleamed in the sunlight. Flowers and sculptures were so prolific it was as though someone had simply thrown them from the back of a horse. There was a building entirely made of glass filled with what looked like trees._

_Unfathomable._

_The High Estates were both residence and fortress, the air mage, Suzumeda, explained. The Guardian could safely rule without ever needing to leave his home. The Lord Magister and his school of mages was also here, she added with a nod to the broadest, highest tower. She huffed when she received much less of a response from Akaashi than she expected._

_Something about the mention of the Guardian set Bokuto trembling harder than ever, so Akaashi moved himself close to his side, and wrapped his arm firmly behind Bokuto’s broad back._

_The days that followed were a whirlwind. Bokuto was put under the care of a young healer whose hulking looks belied his nervous temperament. Banned from Bokuto’s chambers for muttered reasons that he’d been unable to decipher, Akaashi was escorted from place to place under the watchful eye of a young lieutenant named Sawamura._

_He found himself taken most often to the school of healing and magics, where the Lord Magister himself - a terrible old man with offensively thick eyebrows - asked Akaashi to create his fire again and again. He dissolved wood, mice, plants, clothing, horn, gems, and nearly all metal. Strangely, iron took a great deal of time and seemed to rust away, instead of dissolving into a sea of stars. Steel took considerably longer._

_It was exhausting, far outstripping the magic he had on reserve, but the Lord Magister did not care in the slightest. Throughout the entire process, he gave no indication whatsoever as to what Akaashi’s magic could be._

_Weakened and disheartened, Akaashi found himself telling Sawamura his few secrets just to generate enough magic to stay alive. To his great luck, the guard was shrewd but kind, giving out advice much less frequently than simply listening. Who Sawamura was to tell these newly-acquired secrets mattered little to Akaashi; he was too close to collapse to care._

_All secrets involving Bokuto he had kept to himself._

_On those days he was relieved from demonstrating his magic’s ability, he was taken to the library. A young, rather nondescript library assistant took Akaashi’s literacy into his own care, teaching him to write and, by extension, how to move his scarred, claw-like hands again._

_Weeks passed, and Akaashi grew more resilient. His fingers straightened. The color came back to his skin. He began to sleep, though his flashbacks turned to nightmares. And with this growing health, a day was set to meet the Guardian and the rest of the royal family: a young daughter, an elder son, and the ever-present memory of a son lost._

_This had been even more dependent on Bokuto’s recovery. But, from the brink of death he had returned. Each day he stood up taller, spending his afternoons lightly sparring with a tiny, resilient acrobat, and a clever silver-haired fire mage who often served as targets for the Prince’s own training._

_Akaashi still touched Bokuto with the greatest care, uncertain whether it had been the creature or himself who had brought him so close to death. Their almost-kiss was forcibly pushed from his mind in fear that the lightest touch would rip Bokuto apart._

_Day by careful day, they approached the eve of their meeting with the Guardian until it arrived with nervous excitement. And despite Akaashi’s quiet avoidance, nothing could not prevent Bokuto’s whispered, “Come ta my room tonight, Keiji. Suga’ll bring ya.”_

 

The soldiers were accommodating. They patiently waited as Akaashi and Bokuto retrieved their belongings from a cottage. A cottage that hypothetically contained warm, soft beds where they would have slept. Eventually.

The soldiers made no protest at the delay. Instead they watched the sleepy, hungover residents of Wanderer’s Rest wake up and go about their morning. They took the opportunity to catch up with old friends who would have preferred be left alone until several hours had passed or entire pots of tea had been consumed.

It was only when the monolithic blonde soldier made a slightly different expression that the fox-faced man offered Akaashi and Bokuto horses. With the offer came the implication that they were to leave on them whether they wished to do so or not.

Bokuto swallowed and Akaashi saw him shudder out of the corner of his eye.

“We will walk,” he declared. It was the coldest, most perilous voice he could manage through what might well have been a broken nose.

“Eh?” The fox-faced man gaped.

“I’ve made a covenant to walk everywhere I go. Would you deprive a mage of his magic?”

“Well that’s the feeblest covenant I’ve ever heard of, but fine,” the man ran his hand through his auburn hair. “You’re lucky the Wall isn’t that far, old man.”

 

Instead of horses they were given names. Futakuchi, Aone, and Koganegawa: the fox-face, blonde, and eager man respectively. Futakuchi, who behaved much how he looked, took it upon himself to talk the entire march to the Wall, an edifice that Akaashi had only heard vague descriptions of during its construction. He’d had no idea it was manned by a Garrison contingent - he’d expected to phase through it with Bokuto gleefully following behind.

That expectation was already inaccurate, since Bokuto was not talking to him at all.

This state of affairs was simultaneously shocking and completely unsurprising since Akaashi had kissed him, twice. Or Bokuto had kissed Akaashi twice. Or each had kissed the other once. It was a moot point at this juncture. The kissing had shattered their truce into a thousand sparkling fragments. Akaashi had no idea how to piece them back together.

Especially since his heart was still racing, despite all efforts to slow it. First kisses were meant for the young for a reason. Akaashi had always assumed it was because they typically had little else weighing on their minds, but it was worth mentioning that they also possessed bodies that could handle the constant palpitations. Despite his companion’s bleary, worn face, Akaashi felt his heart on the verge of stopping every time he and Bokuto made eye contact.

He’d dreamt of kissing Bokuto for five years straight. Of course, five years was a low estimate. It wasn’t that he’d really stopped after five; he’d simply found himself growing better at blocking out painful fantasies.

Which were now lush, complicated realities.

But his enjoyment of the kisses aside, they were still fighting. Their argument had been the least productive argument in Akaashi’s life. Bokuto’s pressing question of why Akaashi had never returned had gone unanswered. His demands of how on earth kissing a married man was not adultery had been returned with nothing beyond vague acknowledgements of permission. After bursts of anger at Akaashi’s silence, Bokuto apologized for losing his temper, often with tears.

Akaashi had sincerely apologized for his own cruelty upwards of fifty times, and would do so fifty more if he knew it could undo the pain he had caused. But there was only so much he felt he could freely say.

And Bokuto’s lips on his was not something he’d take back.

 

“Lord Magister Akaashi, my lord Bokuto, welcome to the Iron Wall!”

The commander was not far from retirement. A small man, with hair very much like Akaashi’s in both texture and color, he was unfortunately short enough that the bald spot at the top of his head was decidedly visible, especially when bowing. He stood up quickly, eyes shining.

“Commander Kaname Moniwa, at your service,” he smiled widely. “And might I just say, milord, I never dreamed I’d meet the man who not only defeated, but also discovered a way to restrain the-”

“I neither defeated, nor discovered anything,” Akaashi balked at the praise. “Had I done so, we would not find ourselves in this situation.”

Moniwa shrank into himself the tiniest amount. Bokuto cleared his throat so overtly that all the soldiers in the vicinity snickered to themselves.

“We should be thanking you,” Akaashi continued, as was his original intent. “It is your work maintaining this wall that has kept the Domain safe since the reemergence. As I understand, it takes a great deal of maintenance?”

The commander perked up, gesturing behind him just as Futakuchi, brush and can of paint in hand, was lifted in a rope harness to a spot in the middle of the most glorious (and enormous) mural Akaashi had ever seen. A woodland scene, complete with bears, hedgehogs, badgers, and, of course, foxes, trailed as far as the eye could see.

For the Wall truly was enormous. And as its full title stated, it was made entirely of iron, which required regular painting to keep away rust.

“I let the boys do what they want with colors and what not. Nobody up here but Wander’s Rest, and they love the pictures as much as any of us. Futakuchi there, with Aone belaying him down below are our strongest team, I think. Futakuchi will be taking over when I retire come winter…”

The implication of the statement was immediately obvious. The crowd fell quite and Moniwa’s smiling mouth fell open in what was no doubt a weak attempt at apology.

“Best send your painters back to the City, cause ya won’t need this outpost come winter,” Bokuto spoke up, his voice soft and low.

“Indeed,” Moniwa’s face gentled. “Indeed we will not.”

 

Instead of phasing through the wall, they took the doors. It was a great relief. Akaashi did not particularly enjoy phasing, though he assumed Bokuto would likely enjoy it. More importantly, it would have taken a covenant to do and Akaashi did not look forward to humiliating himself in front of an entire company of soldiers. The men of Datay Company were good humored and as kind as he had ever seen soldiers behave, but they were also a large pack of hot blooded young people poised to laugh at anything, especially him. They had laughed at his nose, and laughed even harder when it was healed for reasons he did not understand.

So they took the doors.

They were placed in-between two titanic angled braces, the likes of which lined both sides of the wall. The thick weeds in front showed their lack of use. As he pulled them, Konanegawa was thrilled to explain that the scouting or painting parties typically scaled the wall to get to the other side. The thought made Akaashi’s stomach churn almost as much as phasing did.

As Aone struggled to lift the enormous piece of steel that held the doors closed, Moniwa was explaining rather rapidly what to expect on the other side. Bokuto was distracted by the wall and Akaashi’s thoughts were elsewhere, this being the third time they’d been given this explanation. The general point of it being: they were going to die, but they had to make their way through hell to get to the place where it was going to happen.

Perhaps he should have just let his brother-in-law kill him. He was rather fond of murdering people. 

“Now remember, first there’s the swamp, then the wastes. You can sleep in the wastes but not in the swamp. You might as well run through as much of the swamp as you can, if you ask me. Things there, they aren’t the way they’re meant to be. Only… don’t run, because there’s boggy ground that you won’t find your way out of once you step in. Try not to gather too much attention to yourself, there are just thing that-”

“How far do you think we’ll have to travel?”

“Last sighting was what, three days in, Kamasaki?”

A grizzled blonde soldier, at least as old as Moniwa himself, nodded, his face indicating he didn’t really expect Akaashi and Bokuto to make it back alive. Akaashi himself had his doubts, but he’d prefer if others didn’t make their lack of confidence quite so obvious. Bokuto seemed to share his sentiment.

“We’ll be seein’ you in six days,” he announced as the door swung open.

They hefted their packs on their backs, pony left behind, as the cry of, “Wait!” echoed against the iron wall.

“Can we uh…” Konanegawa was still eager, if a bit unsure, “can we see your purple fire?”

With a flick of his wrist, Akaashi scorched the earth around the door, sparkling purple flames sucking the life from the ground.

“For your troubles. You’ll never have to tend that soil again.”

 

 

_“You are Keiji, yes?” a sensual voice inquired._

_And he was caught._

_This was what Akaashi should have expected, wandering somewhere he was not asked to be. It was mid-afternoon. They were to meet the Guardian tomorrow, and Bokuto’s request echoed through his mind, wrapped in both fear and excitement. All the wandering in the world wouldn’t let him escape it, but that did not stop him from trying._

_He didn’t see the man until he’d spoken. Even then, it was hard to believe such a person was actually there._

_Tall, taller, even than Akaashi himself, his beautiful face was plastered with a handsome, knowing smile that could crush a man’s skull. He was wearing long robes of a pale greenish blue. The thick crown of poppies growing through his dark auburn hair made him seem even more foreboding than his size and demeanor. Though this man seemed little older than Akaashi himself, he was a person men were meant to revere._

_Akaashi couldn’t even attempt it: recent history and current worries had shaken all the reverence out of him._

_“Of course you are Keiji,” the man chuckled to himself, “I know who everyone is before they arrive.” His voice was accented, and not an accent Akaashi had encountered on his long journey across the Domain._

_There was a small huff around the corner where two boys of about ten, one narrow-eyed with anger, the other handsome and serene, peeked out. Both were clad in robes as well, but of the purest white. It was impossible to say which made the noise._

_“Shigeru, Puppy, it is not polite to spy,” the man tsked. “Anyway, it is obvious who **I** am, no?”_

_Akaashi dipped his head, his body still too sore to fall to the ground easily, “Yes, my Lord Gardner.”_

_“That is not the proper form of address~” there was a soft danger in the man’s trailing, singsong words. “But! I have a very complicated relationship with my… position. I think your lack of knowing is not of so much worry! You will learn soon enough, anyway.”_

_Akaashi lifted his gaze, unable to completely hide his confusion. The man narrowed his eyes, as though he were displeased with the amount of awe he was receiving._

_“I left my sanctum,” another sound from the boys, this time a snort. “To give you a warning. For I have seen you, Keiji Akaashi. Many, many years past.”_

_Akaashi fully lifted his head, far too concerned with what was about to be said to care about decorum or the noises of small children._

_The man thrived under Akaashi’s newfound attention._

_“There are rules, Keiji. Rules for those who hear the earth’s voice. There is only so much that we may say without betraying her secrets,” his gaze flicked into Akaashi’s own, piercing, as though trying to measure some kind of worth. “But before I was this… ‘Gardner,’” he spat out the title. “Before I was even a seer, I was a young boy with a name, who was every day playing in the muck with his best friend.”_

_There was no sound from the boys around the corner. A thickness had filled the air._

_“This was interrupted, by none other than you, Keiji Akaashi. Yours was the first face I saw when the flowers grew in my hair. A face, covered in tears and blood, screaming a man’s name, begging the skies for another chance. Another choice.”_

_Akaashi shook his head, wishing for nothing more than for him to stop._

_“‘Bokuto! Bokuto! Bokuto!’”_

_The chill coursing through his body was bitter enough to kill, but he stood tall and demanded explanation._

_The Gardner took a step closer, “Before I became this horror, soaked in the blood of my village, I was Tooru Oikawa. Before I was taken to be a slave, I loved. And in honor of that love, and the vision whose meaning I did not understand, I give **you** its warning. A warning meant for me.”_

_The poppies trembled, tripling in number, growing down the side of his face like a stream of blood. And the Gardner’s voice, the sound of dozens of animals screaming at once, howled down the corridor._

_“ **Run away, Keiji Akaashi. Do not go back to your lover’s bed. Do not give yourself to him. Break his heart, drive him off, and shatter your bond.** ” _

_The hallway was silent for an indeterminable time. Akaashi’s mouth opened. Then closed. Then opened again, clinging to the only piece of logic that remained._

_“He’s not my–”_

_“Do not be toying with me,” the Gardner hissed, slamming Akaashi against the wall by his neck. “Making love is not required to be someone’s lover.”_

_After a much longer time than Akaashi would have liked, the Gardner let him go._

_“Shigeru!” he called over his shoulder, adding further words in another language._

_At the summons, the handsome boy made his way down the hallway. A thick line of black-eyed susans looped along the nape of his neck and wrapped around his ears._

_Kenma’s flowers had been a mass of untended vines – was this level of control something that trained Vidis learned? Was it a measure of power? How did a ten-year-old surpass someone twice his age?_

_“That is not how visions work,” Akaashi said coldly, keeping his confusion and terror locked tight._

_“There is a reason I am holding the seat of the greatest Vidis in the Domain, and you are not, baby mage. But if you insist on denying my words, then perhaps you will trust my cousin’s eyes.”_

_The little boy looked up, his polite gaze cold, almost dead. Akaashi felt himself pulled in deeper and deeper into the darkness of his pupils._

_“They were daisies once,” the Gardner murmured. ”Purity, innocence. They looked beautiful.”_

_Somehow he could feel the man ruffle the boy’s hair without actually seeing it._

_“Then they all fell out.”_

 

The first ten thousand heartbeats took place in silence. Bokuto led the way, having assumed the role and not relinquishing it no matter how quickly Akaashi moved to keep up. Not for the first time, Akaashi wondered how a life of beer and women had managed to produce someone with very few physical limitations. Bokuto’s joints creaked, where Akaashi’s ached. Bokuto’s breath came in pants when Akaashi’s failed him completely.

And so when Bokuto wished to stomp angrily through a swamp there was very little Akaashi could do to stop him. The good looks he’d retained as he’d aged were rather useless in a swamp, especially a cursed swamp that existed because the life of once-normal plants was being leeched away by a distant menace.

So he followed, hoping that their bearings had not been lost. Moniwa’s fear of the swamp had put a sense of uneasiness in Akaashi’s heart, and he hoped to escape it just as quickly as Bokuto seemed to.

All around them, sickly yellow leaves from trees, vines and shrubs hung limp. The ground, though mostly solid, was soggy from an unknown source, as though the healthy green of the leaves had dripped into puddles of muck. Carnivorous plants seemed to be the only things thriving, no doubt living off of the enormous number of flies and midges. Some of them were immensely large. There was a strange, musty smell in the air

Even without Moniwa’s warning, this was not a place Akaashi wished to make camp.

In fact, he would rather be anywhere else when, with a clearing of his throat, Bokuto began to speak.

“See… there’s somethin’ I still don’t get…”

 

 

 _Screams_ _filled the air. The flower-overrun cottages had been draped in white and pale green bunting that morning. But now, in the chaos, the embellishments were shredded, tossed to the ground. Some of them were even on fire along with the buildings they decorated._

_He was hiding. Hiding with Kentarou in the small space between two stone walls. Everyone was being killed. Everyone. His parents, his brother, small children in the street. Kentarou’s father had shoved them into this place and was killed in the process, his body drug away._

_Kentarou was sobbing into Shigeru’s shirt, but Shigeru could not cry. He felt as though his feelings were no longer with his body. They were in another world. Somewhere safe. So he watched. All around him, daisies fell and the only thing he could feel was the fluttering of their petals as they coasted down his arms. There was nothing. There was no reason to be scared. There was nothing left to take from him but Kentarou and the soldiers would take both of them alive, or neither._

_The foreign men were like ghosts. Some of them grabbed children and ran and ran and ran as though they had to get away. Yutaro and Akira were taken like this, screaming at the top of their lungs. But most soldiers just killed whoever they saw. Matsukawa and Hanamaki fought bravely, but were eventually cut down trying to protect Shinji. Then his friend died quietly, small sobs his last sound on earth._

_So many died. And more, and more, until there was nothing but ringing in his ears and Kentarou’s hacking sobs._

_And then, the fighting stopped._

_A soldier made his way into the square, one with a different uniform. Not as tall as the tallest, nor as strong as the strongest, but he was dragging their best fighter, bound, across the dirt. Blood dripped from their townsman’s hair, the color of poppies. The other side of his face was burned beyond recognition. The soldier dragging him tossed their champion’s sword to the ground, daring him to pick it up and fight once more._

_“HAJIME!” the village’s Seer stumbled out of a building as though he’d just broken free. His eyes were red and tear tracks covered his face. Reaching out of the building, the elders grasped at him in a feeble effort to draw him back. The soldier shot them dead with bolts of ice._

_“Why are you? What is it you want?” Oikawa demanded brokenly in the language of the north. The beautiful crown of peonies on his head was wilting in the heat from the burning buildings, petals falling like the cherry blossoms in the springtime. Maybe that was why Shigeru’s daisies were falling out._

_“Let him go,” Oikawa fell to his knees despite his lame leg. “Let him go and we will give you anything you want.”_

_The soldier laughed. “You. My father wants you to take over as the Gardner.”_

_Oikawa was desperately defiant even from the ground. “I do not know what that is!”_

_“A Vidis,” his lip curled in arrogance, “a **seer**. You will come to the Domain. You, and whatever children you deem good enough to be your successor. It should be easy, I’ve never seen more flowerheads in my life. Must be something in the water.” He spat on a small head of withered roses near his foot. _

_Oikawa’s bottom lip trembled but he lifted himself up to stand tall._

_“How am I doing this, when you have killed **all the children**?” _

_His statement wasn’t an argument._

_“Tooru,” Iwaizumi grunted in their language, “don’t. He’s nothing but a liar.”_

_The man spun and kicked him hard in the stomach._

_“Did I ask you to speak, you pig?”_

_With feral eyes, Oikawa rushed forward. “If you touch him again, I will kill myself and you will have **nothing**!” _

_The soldier turned casually, as though he were on the verge of a generous offer._

_“You didn’t see us coming?” he asked sweetly. “Our current Gardner says you’re the most powerful Vidis he’s ever seen… but you didn’t see us coming. How unfortunate for this village. They’re all going to die, thanks to your incompetence.”_

_Iwaizumi spat at his feet and the man kicked him again, twice. Oikawa pulled a knife from his belt, but before he could reach his own throat, the soldier had him by the neck._

_“I am Atsumu Miya, Lord Prince of the Domain and, with luck, the Guardian sooner rather than later,” he announced happily. “And you, Tooru Oikawa, are going to pick a successor and come along to my father or I am going to dismember this man while you watch.”_

 

“Back then,” Bokuto’s pace didn’t slow. “Ya said a lot o’ things.” 

Akaashi rushed to catch up, but found his leg slipping into boggy water instead.

“Ya told me I was too stupid,” Bokuto’s voice was a low rumble. “That you’d found me a…” he paused with what might have been a swallow. As though forty-year-old knives could still cut just as sharp. “…‘a convenient pack mule, and an excellent human shield.’ That I was-”

Forty year old knives could indeed cut just as deep.

“Stop,” Akaashi’s voice hovered on the verge of breaking, “It was not… I never wanted…”

“What didn’t ya want?”

That answer Akaashi kept to himself.

“What would you have done when my marriage was announced?” he coldly asked, gathering himself back together. “You would have done something rash and terrible.”

“How did ya know they were gonna make you marry her?” Bokuto pressed. “We coulda run away, Keiji!”

“No. You would have been killed. I know you escaped the Garrison once, but you will not ever manage it a second time. I saved your life!”

 

 

“ _He_ _killed Hajime anyway,” the Gardner said as Akaashi fell backwards, expelled from the void in Shigeru’s eyes. “Right in front of us. They killed everyone but Shigeru and Kentaro. I said that they were both seers… er… ‘Vidis,’ as you say. If Shigeru’s flowers had not have fallen out, Kentaro would have been killed as well. I convinced the prince they were twins. I realize now that hit a soft spot.”_

_There was the sound of a limping step, and then Akaashi found himself lifted to his feet._

_“Bokuto and the rest… they left the Garrison cause they didn’t wanna kill kids,” Akaashi whispered._

_“What, your band of renegades? How noble of them to be running away from the murder of our people. Although I suppose they could not have stopped anyone.”_

_“And you’ve been trapped **here** , with his Lordship since…”_

_“What is two years of the rest of my life?”_

_There was a long heavy pause. Akaashi had no idea what to say, other than the obvious._

_“I’m sorry.”_

_“It is not me that you should be concerned with,” Oikawa’s voice was soft. It was far more ominous than soothing. “Believe me, I am nothing but selfish. One day, I am going to tear this Dominion out by the roots. Your mind will be an important tool, one you must be keeping together for me.”_

_Akaashi stared dumbly, numb from what he’d seen. A hand squeezed his shoulder, and Oikawa spoke again, apology thick in his voice._

_“You are far more powerful than me. Or anyone this horrible land has ever seen. They will keep you, as they have kept me, that you cannot escape.”_

_“You must be mistaken,” Akaashi found his voice again._

_Oikawa rolled his eyes. “Show me this fire everyone is speaking of.”_

_He opened his trembling hand, revealing a blossom of purple flames._

_“Have you ever wondered why no one else has magic like that, Keiji?”  the Gardner murmured._

_He said nothing._

_“You are ignorant of your power. They are not.”_

_That night, Akaashi rejected Bokuto in the coldest language he could possibly manage. He shattered him, scorching his own heart in the process._

_The next morning, his marriage to Her Ladyship, Princess Kiyoko was announced._

 

“What gives ya the right ta make decisions for me?” Bokuto roared, the sound strangely muted by the swamp around them.

“Well tell me this, Bokuto, what would you have done back then to keep me alive? If our roles were reversed, perhaps?”

“Anything!” Bokuto seemed to hardly listen to the hypothetical. “But I didn’t know. Ya coulda told me - it was my life, not yours.”

“You would not have listened!”

“Since when is Keiji Akaashi the guardian of my choices?”

“I don’t care about your choices,” Akaashi spat. “What I care about is that you survive.”

“Survive? D’ya know what kinda life it’s been? Spent two years looking for the rest of the crew. Those two soldiers, Yukie and ‘Meda and that feller who healed your hands, Onaga, they came to help when that outpost saw what I was doing. Could’t find em. Couldn’t even find their bones.”

“But you were alive,” Akaashi insisted.

“Couldn’t go home, nothin’ left for me there, so I went back to Catseye and started drinking and falling inta bed with whatever women would have me. Didn’t even have a job, cept chopping down trees. If it hadn’t been for the people in that town, taking me in and given me a reason to be alive, mighta just offed myself outta sheer misery. So don’t _say_ I was alive, Akaashi. I needed ya. I thought ya hated me for killing Konoha. I thought you’d hated me all along. I’d killed or lost all my best friends, and ya threw me out on my ass and then married the most beautiful woman in the realm.”

“Child,” Akaashi growled. “I married a child.”

 

 

_“Your Ladyship,” Akaashi said to the trembling girl seated next to him on the enormous bed. His wife. His beautiful, kind, and very much unwanted wife._

_“There is nothing to fear.”_

_Dark eyes flew to his, then back down to her trembling legs, tightly closed. She had been dressed in a silk shift, overlaid in lace stitched with freshwater pearls. The cut revealed curves that were beyond her years._

_Fourteen years. Much younger than she looked, and much too young for the most ill-advised marriage. Even at nineteen, Akaashi was pushing what was considered wise for healthy children and a productive future. But they were married. And expected to consummate and produce children as soon as possible. Children with death shining in their eyes and purple flames in their hands. Children to rule the Dominion with iron strength. Children to replace an unhinged eldest son._

_“Please, husband,” her voice was steady even as she shook. She placed her hand on his, “you need not hesitate. I am much stronger than I look.”_

_He slid back across the bed, far from any positioning that indicated he required or wanted her strength._

_“Lady Kiyoko, you are far too young. Though I earnestly believe I am a good man, the truth is I am far too disinterested to be tested by your charms. Please, believe me when I say, that if we choose to spend the night in each other’s arms it will be years from now, and it will be by your fervent request.”_

_The lovely girl looked at him, deep blue eyes filled with surprise and compassion._

_“I’m sorry,” she whispered._

 

 

Moniwa’s paranoia had been justified. Akaashi should have listened to him in more detail.

Because beyond all reasoning, they had fallen asleep in the swamp. In the middle of an argument, they had fallen asleep. It was hard to say exactly how that had come to pass. It had started with a slowness in their legs, then a heaviness in their arms, and before Akaashi could cast anything, they found themselves sucked into a slowly growing loss of consciousness even while they still walked.

And now they were here. 

“Here” was sticking to the leaves of the largest sundew that Akaashi had ever seen. Exponentially the largest.

Lying horizontally, he could see the tip of the leaf he was plastered to beginning to curl in on his boots, their leather slowly melting into the digestive fluid on the plant’s spines. Leather would soon give way to skin and to bone, as Akaashi found it impossible to move much beyond his fingers and face.

“Agaaseeeeee,” Bokuto wailed, “What the bloody hell is this thing? How’d we get in here? We were fighting’ then we just conked out!”

What Akaashi saw first was the vertical column of Bokuto’s hair, looking even more vertical then normal. Then his face, red and twisted with struggle from where he was hanging from a vertical leaf. Upside-down.

“How’d we get in this thing anyway, they don’t even move,” he grumbled. “My clothes are meltin’!”

Akaashi tried to summon his magic, to cut away the leaf he was stuck in, but, perhaps as a byproduct of the twisted force that had created it, or maybe whatever had put them asleep, he could do little more than free his fingers.

“Not this again,” Bokuto whined. “What good’s magic when it only works half the time?”

“I don’t see you chopping yourself free,” he retorted, sounding snippier than he’d like. But he had a limited number of powerful secrets, and if this plant was somehow muting his magic, he’d need a truly strong burst to get free.

“When I was ten I-”

“Already know that one,” Bokuto sighed.

“Once I took one of my mother’s dresses and I-”

“Do ya think I’d forget that one? Akaashi, maybe your memory’s gone, but mine’s’ good as ever.”

“My wife once thought my best friend and I were lovers. She kept sending him gifts, until his wife thought he was having an affair with _her_.”

“That’s jus’ a funny story! How do you even do your job, Akaashi, you’re terrible at these!”

“I rarely need to make covenants! My magic is of the slow-burning sort.”

His only response was hysterical laughter.

If this was the way things were to be, then so be it.

“Bokuto, I have never once satisfied my wife. I can’t. I’ve never…” he shuddered feeling the power course through his shoulders and down to the tips of his toes, “never satisfied anyone, in fact. I don’t believe it’s possible that I can.”

 

 

 _The_ _pure white sheets on Kiyoko’s bed were the softest cotton Akaashi had ever touched. The smoke of sandalwood incense weaved in and out amongst the flickering candles. And as Akaashi rolled onto his back, his wine-red lips sticky with unenthusiastic kisses, he wished he were sleeping in a barn instead._

_“I’m sorry, my princess,” he sighed. “Apparently wine does not help.”_

_He was a young man still. Only twenty-nine. Far from the age when men grew inadequate. And yet…_

_“Keiji,” his wife gently ruffled his hair, the covers pulled up to her neck, “you were taken from everyone you loved and forced to marry me. I have heard of men, who… well… um… the stress. Not to mention the heartbreak of losing the man you-”_

_“The stress indeed,” he cleared his throat._

_There was little to say, so he hitched himself up against the sumptuous headboard and began to braid her hair. She leaned into his touch, and he wondered what it would be like to be in love with a woman like this. If she loved him in return. If this mockery of a marriage were somehow real. They could make each other very happy, in that world._

_Now they just tried as best they could to make do._

_“Yui,” the name of her mistress sounded different on her lips. Spoken through a gentle smile with the smallest secret sweetness, “she has an idea on how you can leave me with child…”_

 

 

Bokuto was flabbergasted. Much less concerned over their most current brush with death, his mind was full of questions of biology.

“But that time in the moors… and ya have a son! Or wait, is the prince a bastar-”

“He is _my son,_ ” Akaashi blasted himself free of the menacing plant, “in every way. He even carries my magic. The moors was a physical reaction to someone else _using my staff while I was dying_. I’ve never… properly… with another person…”

“But.” Bokuto gnawed on his lips, still hanging upside down, “If ya can’t get it up, doesn’t that make ya a virgin?”

“If I remain a virgin because I never found my completion, then there are mothers who could say the same. I’ve tried to lie with my wife one hundred and ninety six times, all of them unsuccessful, though not for lack of trying.”

“From where I stand,” Bokuto was still not standing, “she coulda tried a little harder.”

“If you must speak of my wife at all, you will not speak of her as though she is some common whore,” Akaashi snapped the leaf holding Bokuto off the ground, and he fell to the ground in an undignified pile. “She was fourteen when we were married. _Fourteen._ I was heartbroken, certainly, but she was _terrified_. You will not speak ill of her.”

There was a long, heavy pause, during which Akaashi realized he had said too much.

“Shouldn’t talk about any woman like that,” Bokuto dusted himself off as he stood. I know better. Sorry,” he apologized softly.

“But…I bet I coulda made ya do it,” he added, softer still.

Akaashi was beyond mortified, “It was not a question of making.”

“Ya didn’t want to do it with the princess,” Bokuto insisted, a quiet wonder in his voice. “But ya wanted to do it with me.”

“That doesn’t mean that I’ll just magically-”

“Wait…” Bokuto interrupted, catching on to his use of the present tense, “ya, really want to? As in now? And she really doesn’t care?”

Akaashi should have given himself a long moment to decide on his words. But he was cornered, shaken, and had nearly been digested by a void-altered carnivorous plant.

So he did not.

“My wife had a mistress, until she passed away five years ago. Yui and I were dear friends. And perhaps you didn’t notice, but I kissed you yesterday. Koutarou, I was sick with love for you when I was nineteen,” he swallowed. “It’s a condition from which I never recovered.”

It took Bokuto some time to unravel that statement and when he did, it took some time to unravel Bokuto.

“I was jus… jus thinking out loud,” he sputtered. “If ya, well, I mean, of course I want ta but ya deserve time and a better place and some kinda slow, sweet romance, I mean, Keiji, I don’t want to rush ya into somethin’ when we’re gonna…”

Die.

“What does it matter? The moments we spent slowly, cautiously falling into each other’s arms were ridiculous _._ In the end, wasted time that we could have spent _together_. I refuse to wait a second longer. If you hate me for what I’ve done to you, then say so.”

He took a deep breath.

“But if you love me, even if only for the night, then let us be together! If we die, I will have loved you. If we live, then… you can laugh in my face.”

“So ya _do_ think I can get ya off,” Bokuto said smugly, right before he toppled into the bog.

 

 

 _He_ _thought of Bokuto. Of his eyes, his hands, his face, his smile. All of the many things he did not allow himself to think about anymore. He thought of them while he thrust into his own fingers, hard and desperate as he could only be when he was completely alone._

_Alone except for the small clay cup that sat on the bed next to him. A cup that it was his duty to fill, so that the woman his wife loved could somehow bring forth a child from it._

_Cups were easy to ignore._

_Bokuto was happy. He was strong, and lived in a village full of children who called him “uncle” and asked for piggyback rides. His skin was still burned brown, his eyes were still bright. He was surrounded by friends and had forgotten the agony of ten years ago._

_He was happy._

_Keiji had not broken him._

_He was happy and they were in love._

_The cup was an awkward partner. He spilled a bit because it was too small._

_And it most certainly was not named, “Koutarou.”_

 

The ground of the wastes was stone and dirt, which meant the floor of their hastily-assembled tent was rocky. It cut into their knees.

“Wait. But couldn’t ya…” Bokuto stripped off his shirt, “I mean ya wanna do this pretty bad, right?”

“What do you think?” Akaashi cocked his eyebrow as he tumbled out of his trousers.

“I’m just sayin,” Bokuto kissed him again, “wouldn’t it give ya a lot of power if ya didn’t? If ya gave it up for one of those agreements?”

Akaashi pulled back and held Bokuto at arm’s length. “They’re called covenants, Koutarou. I didn’t go to bed with you once to save your life. Now I am a selfish old man who refuses to do it once more.”

“Might as well go out in a blaze o’ glory,” Bokuto whispered into his collarbone before pulling back and taking Akaashi’s tunic with him.

In little time, they were kneeling across from each other on their awkwardly pushed-together bedrolls, each stripped down to their underclothes. Akaashi had seen enough naked bodies in the baths to know that they were both fit for their age, but the fact remained that Bokuto was somewhat firm where Akaashi was decidedly saggy. He felt self-conscious about the latter despite the miraculous stirrings of an erection against his leg.

Not to mention the uneven ground was a distraction, making the stirrings a bit weaker than he’d fervently wished for. The soft fires in Bokuto’s eyes were not enough to make up for razor sharp rocks cutting into Akaashi’s kneecaps.

He took a deep breath and willed the anxiety away.

It only took a bit of magic pulsing under his hands to soften the ground around the tent. Wasted, maybe, but he did not care. Bokuto visibly relaxed at the change in sensation. The fire in his eyes overtook his entire face, roaring with desire. He leaned forward, hand on Akaashi’s shoulder, pulling him close.

“My Lord Magister, if y’aren’t just as comely as ya were forty years ago,” he chuckled into Akaashi’s neck.

“Don’t call me that,” Akaashi murmured, torn between blushing like a teenager and writing a lengthy thesis on the demerits of the skin under his arms. He could not control the blush any more than he could stop the sun, though he wanted to do both. To stay here, like this, for days, weeks, years, a lifetime.

It was no good to think like that.

“…my lord,” he added, running his finger down the nape of Bokuto’s neck.

“Ya saucy little minx,” Bokuto chuckled, pulling back to press their lips together. They were so much softer than Akaashi had ever dreamed, warm and insistent against his own.

“I do not know what you expect out of this bedroom banter, but I have no skill for it,” he deadpanned, the effect somewhat diminished by the fact that he was saying the words directly into Bokuto’s mouth.

In response, Bokuto leaned forward, pressing Akaashi backward toward the bedroll. Halfway down, his back cracked loud enough to wake the dead, and it was not a pleasant feeling.

“Sorry! Sorry!” Bokuto let go, only for Akaashi to fall sideways, hitting their makeshift bed with a grunt. His shoulders shook with laughter. Bokuto mistook the movement for tears and was immediately leaning over, demanding after his health.

Wrapping his elbow around Bokuto’s neck, Akaashi flopped him over his body to lie at his side with a great oof. There was grumbling, then laughter, then grumbling at said laughter, until the two of them were lying on their sides, face-to-face, laughing like Akaashi hadn’t laughed in years. It wasn’t until he became completely aware of Bokuto’s hand running through his hair that he pulled himself together for the long-awaited task at hand.

“What…” Bokuto swallowed nervously, “whaddya wanna do, Keiji?”

Everything. Unfortunately he had no idea what _anything_ was, beyond his imaginings, titillating and otherwise. 

“As I’ve mentioned, I have no experience in this area.”

No. That sounded too cold and distant. Did he even remember how to speak to someone intimately anymore? Remember was the wrong word as well, as he had never really done so.

“Well, yer not the only one,” Bokuto scratched the back of his head. “Never done it with a man myself, either.”

“But all those women!” Akaashi’s shock overtook his decorum, but Bokuto just burst into laughter.

“I’ve been bedding women ta keep from thinkin’ on ya since the day we arrived in Catseye, Keiji. After ya sent me away, I did it ta forget. Wasn’t about ta find some man remindin me of what I couldn’t have. Woulda thought about Kuroo, maybe after a decade or so, but turns out he’d been in love with Kenma since before he joined the Garrison.”

“So neither of us know what we’re doing,” he was quick to end that line of discussion.

“I s’pose not, though both of us have cocks, so there’s that ta be considered.”

Akaashi gulped.

“Keijiiii…” Bokuto smiled gently, and pushed a stray hair behind his ear. “Yer blushin’. We don’t gotta do anything, ya know. Can just lay here quiet. Never dreamed I’d even get this.”

“I want to, you ass,” Akaashi sputtered, overwhelmed by gentleness that he very well should have expected. “And… I did.”

“Did what?”

“Dreamt of this,” he regretted saying. “Every night I… us… I erm, just…”

Bokuto rescued him from his blathering with a deep kiss. One turned into four which turned into eleven, which turned into a number Keiji couldn’t keep track of anymore. Their bodies slid into each other, Bokuto’s warm skin pressed against Akaashi’s, his own leg slipping in between Bokuto’s strong thighs.

Akaashi still wasn’t hard, but he tried not to think about that.

And indeed, the softness of Bokuto’s lips as they caressed his own, the roughness of his hands as they mapped the planes of his shoulder blades were more than enough distraction. Akaashi felt emboldened and splayed his own hands across the wide expanse of Bokuto’s chest, pebbled nipples slipping under his palms. Bokuto gasped at the touch, and Akaashi slid his hands over his chest again, and again, until he was using the tips of his fingers to tease and tweak and Bokuto was all but panting into his mouth.

Their kisses felt more insistent, the push and pull between them growing more intense. Bokuto’s hands slid down his back and under his underclothes, grasping at his ass. Akaashi’s momentary flash of self consciousness was crushed by the sheer intensity of Bokuto’s kisses, as he used his new positioning to draw Akaashi closer.

It was then that Akaashi became cognizant of the fact that he was, in fact, hard, and he had been lightly rutting against Bokuto’s leg for some time.

“Don’t stop, love,” Bokuto murmured, his own erection twitching against Akaashi’s hip, perhaps in the absence of the undulating motions he’d been unwittingly providing. “Please don’t stop.”

“I don’t want…” Akaashi had no idea what words would be the best for the situation. All he knew were the clinical and most vulgar. “Don’t want to finish like this.”

“Me either, when it comes down to it,” Bokuto chuckled.

With something in mind, Akaashi rolled onto his back, then sat up and quickly pulled Bokuto’s underclothes away, leaving him naked and panting. His cock sprung up from a nest of grey and black hair, looking angry and much larger than Akaashi’s own. That didn’t particularly matter, except it was just as anyone would assume it would be, which was just the tiniest bit infuriating.

Bokuto reached out and suddenly Akaashi was precariously positioned on his stomach while his last item of clothing was awkwardly inched down his legs. Liberated from his underclothes, he was free to slide down and straddle Bokuto, their cocks lightly bumping into each other.

Bokuto sat up, pulling him into a deep kiss, while his hand snaked between the two of them, wrapping around their cocks and pumping gently.

Akaashi’s toes curled, overwhelmed by the psychological satisfaction, the physical pleasure, and the undeniable discomfort. Bokuto’s hands were calloused and scarred and dry, and they pulled on the delicate skin.

“Wait a moment,” he pulled back, confusion evident in Bokuto’s blown pupils.

His first thought was to look through his pack, perhaps for some oil he had idiotically packed for some kind of cooking. But he was not that stupid. There was no oil, no salves, no creams. Just spit, which Akaashi knew from cold experience was not a wonderful lubricant.

With a few murmured words - perhaps the most embarrassed Akaashi had ever been casting a spell - his hand was drenched in rapeseed oil. It was the first thing that came to mind, remembering the fields of golden flowers surrounding his home. He’d always wanted to take Bokuto there.

Now they finally had the chance, however slim.

“Where’d ya get that?” Bokuto’s eyebrow shot up, still a somewhat far distance from his hairline. “Didja think we were gonna fry up a nice dinner?”

“I’m a mage, I summoned it.”

“Isn’t that wasting your magic?”

“If my magic is a city’s cistern, that was a teaspoon of it.”

“…what’s a teaspoon?”

“Not a lot. Now,” he settled himself back into Bokuto’s lap, holding the hand with the precious oil higher than was perhaps necessary. “I’d like to try it this way.”

He was familiar with the touch of his own hand, the feel of warm oil dripping on his cock, the pull of his foreskin away from the head. But he was unfamiliar with Bokuto’s hand against his, of their cocks sliding against each other with the uncontrollable thrusting of Akaashi’s hips. Of the heat. Of the desperation. Of the passionate kisses.

“Don’t ever do it again,” Bokuto huffed into his neck.

“What?” Akaashi’s hand moved faster.

“Push me away ta keep me alive,” he kissed his forehead. “Let me choose.”

“Koutarou,” Akaashi gasped out as their hips rutted against each other’s, “you’re an idiot, you’ll always choose to die.”

“I might be an idiot, but I’m still a- still a man,” Bokuto stuttered, the movement of his hips sharp.

 “I want you to stay a man for as long as possible,” Akaashi retorted.

Bokuto stilled their hands just as the yearning increased to desperation, “Promise me, Keiji. Promise me you’ll let me choose.”

“Are you holdin’ this over my head?” Akaashi chuckled, knowing what answer Bokuto deserved.

“Yes,” Bokuto unabashedly returned. “But I don’t think I can, if you don’t… I need you to promise.”

“Promise,” Akaashi exhaled, his eyes filling with tears. “Don’t think I could stop ya anyway.”

Bokuto’s hand picked up the pace, and he leaned his head to Akaashi’s shoulder, murmuring sweet nonsense. Akaashi felt the tug, the steady gentle pull dragging him towards the edge.

_What if he couldn’t? What if he ruined this?_

“I love ya, Keiji. Never stopped, not for a minute.”

And Akaashi fell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> people were experimenting with artificial insemination in the fourteen hundreds so i figured it'd be alright.
> 
> also, in more beautiful news, Bee painted [this stunning Oikawa!](http://silvercistern.tumblr.com/post/165098196270/beechichi-vidisoikawa-from-silvercistern)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter has a lot of blood and a bit of gore so be warned.

The first thing Akaashi felt was fingers gently running through his hair. Blunt nails carded through the strands, separating each curl with a small bounce. The repetitive action caught a sensitive spot that sent a wave of pleasure rolling down his neck to wedge itself in between his shoulders. The sense of comfort was so deep that he didn’t even mind when curls were brushed away to expose the top of his head. Calloused fingertips drew swirls on the sensitive skin of his scalp. He felt at ease.

The second thing Akaashi felt was utter agony. He had fallen asleep sprawled across Bokuto’s chest, all four of their legs tangled together. Romantic, perhaps, but uncomfortable, certainly. He’d rarely experienced anything quite like the pain he now felt every time he moved, or even breathed deeply. Reaching out for his staff, he cast a sloppy healing spell on his back. True self-compassion was terribly difficult, and the spell probably drained more magic than it should, but he didn’t think he could walk otherwise.

“Mornin’ love,” Bokuto’s gravely voice tickled the hairs on the back of his neck. He wanted to fall into that voice, to live there quietly and build a little cottage where he taught village children how to read and control their tiny magics.

But he couldn’t.

“Good morning, Koutarou.” He lifted his head and was immediately floored by the sheer affection staring back at him.

“C’mere,” Bokuto pulled him closer, blinked, and then smiled. “Wanna see your eyes as clear as I can get em.” He pushed curls away from Akaashi’s forehead. “They’re like the sea, ya know. Never can tell if they’re green or blue.”

The time for guile long past, Akaashi propped himself up on his elbows. “Yours are gold. They’ve always reminded me of home.”

“Really?” Bokuto preened, “Saw ‘em a few times in the mirrors at that accursed estates place. Always thought em orangy-brown, like that stone with the bugs in it.”

“Amber? No, they’re far more gold than that.” Akaashi adjusted his legs, only to graze his naked thigh against Bokuto’s equally naked morning erection.

“Ah, um, sorry bout that, Keiji,” Bokuto grinned sheepishly.    

“I see no reason to apologize.”

It was time to ride the sudden surge of arousal wherever it might take him.

Unfortunately, that was not far. Probably with a great deal of patience, gentle coaxing, and dirty thoughts whispered softly into Akaashi’s ear, Bokuto could have made him come. But there was no time for patience. So Akaashi clumsily took Bokuto into his mouth and taught himself how to please a man while his lover moaned his name and clutched at his hair. Bokuto’s spend tasted as bitter as the thought of leaving the stale air of their tent. 

But there was nothing else for it.

 

“What’s that?” Bokuto gestured to the small blue stone. It was a pendant around Akaashi’s neck and he was in the process of tucking it into his shirt.

“It is a way for my family to know if I am dead,” was the morbid answer.

Bokuto sat up, “Well, first off: how’s it work? And second: why didn’t ya give one to Kuroo?”

And of course he would have liked to. “Stones that can hold this particular spell are rare. These are the only two I have ever found. The man who possesses the other half of this,” he held up the stone, “has promised to contact Kuroo if it goes dark.”

“Dark?”

Akaashi brought the stone to his lips and blew gently. It glowed softly, much the same color of the blue tide, but with less intensity.

“If the bearer of its companion stone were dead, this would give forth no light.”

 

 

 _The_ _piercing cry from Kiyoko’s room sliced away a piece of Akaashi’s heart that he would never recover._

_The noise echoed through the halls, alerting everyone in the family residence to the same fact. The crowd in front of the door reacted with blissful relief._

_All but one._

_“Eh,” a long-limbed man with sandy blonde hair huffed in disappointment. “It’s born live then,” he groused._

_Akaashi ignored him as best he could, which was actually quite a lot, as the distracting cries of his child sounded through the huge oak doors. He had been pacing in front of them for hours as Kiyoko’s muffled groans had slowly expanded into pained cries. He was desperately anxious, and full to the brim with magic he had saved with no real idea of what he could possibly do with it._

_Men did not view births. Even were he a woman, it would still not be his place to be there: he was a parent only by Yui’s cleverness and luck. Precious though she was to him, Kiyoko was to spend this intimate moment with the person she most loved. Yet he worried for his wife. She’d fallen quiet at the sounds of the baby’s cries. They were a reassurance but her silence was not._

_The door swung open, nearly hitting him in the face, revealing one of the subordinate midwives._

_“My Lord Magister,” she smiled and spoke softly. “Please come in to meet your child.”_

_Shaking with anticipation, Akaashi entered the room._

_Nearly all was as he knew it, tall windows thrown wide despite the snowy winter’s chill. The damask blanket and dark sheets were replaced with fresh white. Subordinate midwives bustled everywhere, removing towels, water, and other evidence of the birth. Their calls of “Mistress Yui! Mistress Yui!” were jarring, as though the location of sheets and towels was an emergency for the High Estates’ chief midwife to personally address._

_Akaashi finally broke his way through the black-clad young women to find his wife bundled in the center of the great expanse of her bed. Her braid was loose and mused by sweat, and she was pale beyond her typical light skin, yet she looked blissfully happy. At her side, Yui sat, staring with unfathomable pride at the bundle in her lover’s arms._

_“Such a greedy boy,” Kiyoko said softly to the child at her breast. “Two mamas and such a brilliant papa all to love you.”_

_The shock of having a son, really of having a child of any sort, set Akaashi shaking even further._

_“If he’s not going to feed, let Keiji hold him, darling,” Yui smiled. “He looks like he is going to shake apart.”_

_“I don’t know if I can hold him,” his voice quaked._

_“Have we decided on a name yet?” Yui smiled as she handed the baby over despite his choked protests. “You know I prefer Ritsu, but since I’m the shadow mother…”_

_Tiny. Amazingly tiny, with a scrunched up red face that spoke to the trauma of being born._

_“He looks like you, milord,” someone said. “They always look like their papas when they’re born.” He couldn’t disagree, though he saw traces of Kiyoko in the straight black hair, the nose, and even the structure of his cheekbones._

_“I think he looks like his mother,” he croaked, just then realizing he was crying on the baby. Perhaps from the tears, or maybe just on a whim, the child opened his eyes wide, showing off the dark blue of Kiyoko’s own. Akaashi gasped and smiled up at her, “His eyes, they’re…”_

_“Eyes change a lot, Keiji,” Yui laughed, “he may have yours ye-”_

_The doors slammed open, and the man he least wanted to see strode inside, despite the subordinate midwives’ pathetic attempts to shoo him away. The destroyer of villages and murderer of children strode across the room. He tossed his sandy hair while propping his foot up on the footboard, as though the room belonged to him. After a few breaths he stepped to Akaashi’s side like it was his place to be there._

_“A son,” he announced after peeking under the baby’s blanket. “Congratulations, little sister!”_

_Sensing the stress in the room, the baby started to fuss. Akaashi pulled him close._

_“Congratulations to the father as well,” Miya added casually. His voice maintained its tone as he continued._

_“Rest assured that if I see one speck of purple fire coming from this brat, I will make certain he does not live long enough to put it to use.” He leaned forward to caress his sister’s forehead. “Akaashi, I know why my father chose you for sweet Kiyoko, but I will not see myself usurped while I am still breathing.”_

_Yui growled, held in place only by Kiyoko’s death grip on her wrist._

_“Oh?” Akaashi said, handing the baby away after kissing his forehead._

_He took a quick step towards his brother-in-law, grasping his shoulders as if in hearty greeting, then leaned forward to kiss his cheek. A cloud of purple danced in the wake of his lips._

_“Then the Guardian’s house will have no heir at all, for as long as I live, your life depends on that of my son’s.”_

 

 

“No no, Keiji, I’m not thirsty.”

The most irritating kind of death, Akaashi had decided, was the sort that had to be earnestly pursued in a place as dreadful as the wastes.

“Really, I’ve had plenty ta drink, ya can stop naggin’.”

Moniwa had stressed the dangers of the swamp for good reason: those dangers were of an active variety. In his estimation, the wastes were a comparatively happy place, if a bit desolate. Fear of the carnivorous plants and who knows what else had colored his perception a blushing rose. But for Akaashi and Bokuto, who did not plan to simply scout the wastes and then leave them, there was a lot more complexity in the location.

The most prominent feature was the lack of features. The land had been stripped of all life, from the trees to the smallest scrubbiest ground plants. With nothing to hold water or draw rain, it was a desert, though its heat was simply that of a treeless place. Akaashi had spent his entire young life in this sort of sweltering summer, and he found this no less oppressive, but no less bearable.

Bokuto, on the other hand, did not do well in the heat. There were downsides to not being a shriveled up version of your former self, and one of them appeared to be that Bokuto could not cool down the way he once had. Beads of sweat trailed down his temples, and his clothes were under his armor were nearly saturated.

Akaashi’s biggest concern was keeping his companion hydrated, while Bokuto’s biggest concern seemed to be drinking as little as possible.

“I’m just fine, Keiji, have some more for yourself.”

There was a certain aching sweetness about it, but that was overshadowed by how impractical this sort of self sacrifice was. Bokuto needed water, and he needed it desperately. Akaashi could go with less, it seemed, so he drank less.

This was in some way a blessing, because the other problem regarding the wastes was just how big they actually were. Their food and water were likely to run out before they even found their quarry. Akaashi could summon water and provisions, but both spells had diminishing returns, no matter how powerful the mage. When they most needed it, they were likely to get a teaspoon of water. The spell had to be reserved until the last moment.

“Ah… wish Kenma was here,” Bokuto swept his arm across his forehead. “Well. I ‘spose, I _don’t_ ; this place is rotten… but since that would mean he was still alive… I ‘spose I do? Anyway, he always knew what ta do, times like this. Maybe he coulda told us where ta go…”

Akaashi stopped what he was doing completely. Bokuto had taken at least ten paces before he realized that he wasn’t being followed.

“What’s wrong, Keiji?”

He couldn’t say, he was too busy scrabbling with his pack to find the small box that had been left for him in Kenma’s garden room.

 _Plant this when Koutarou misses me_ , the note had said.

 

The ground was so hard they had to use the blunt end of Bokuto’s axe to make something resembling a small hole. The peapod was barely the length of half of Akaashi’s palm, but if they were going to plant it, they were going to plant it properly.

Akaashi was not allowing himself much hope at the yields from planting the long-dried seeds. He’d never seen or even heard of a vidis doing any sort of magic other than tell the future and draw plants to themselves. Of course, he’d never heard of any plucking away their own greenery either.

After a final thud, the haft of Bokuto’s axe pulled away, leaving a sizable hole. He crouched down next to it, brushing the dirt into a small circle to tip over the peapod when it was planted. He looked up at Akaashi, his forehead wrinkled against the sun, as he eagerly asked when he was going to get on with it.

Akaashi crouched down as well, holding the still unopened box in one hand. With the other, he removed the lid, revealing the shriveled up pod, seeds visible as raised dots against the dark, wrinkled skin. With impossible gentleness, Bokuto’s large fingers pinched the pod, lifting it out of its container then dropping it into the ground. He pushed the dirt into the hole, then raised his gaze to Akaashi, who sat poised with a small knife.

A slice, and water poured from his palm, directed into the ground. Blood from his cut swirled into the water as it doused the pod and surrounding dirt.

Then nothing.

Standing up and turning around, Akaashi slapped his hands together, ridding them of excess water. The next time he’d summon water, it would not be enough for both of them. After that, it would not be enough for one. A waste. A complete waste.

But then Bokuto gasped.

Akaashi turned to see a sprouting sweet pea plant, the angular stems leading to immediately blooming flowers hanging in heavy magentas and and whites. He exhaled, his breath bringing the wind, which made the blossoms swing.

“Look!” Bokuto hissed. “Keiji, it’s-”

And it was.

Spreading from the sweet pea were other plants. Daisies came first, dancing across the ground in a carpet of green, their blossoms following shortly afterwards, unfurling like tiny suns. Next were patches of blackeyed susans, towering over the daisies in standards of black and yellow. Poppies sprung up, scattering through the daisies, splashes of blood across the barren landscape. Thick peony bushes exploded from the ground, their heavy pastel blossoms fully formed and shaking off clods of dirt. The plants raced across the desert, leaving a single lane of dusty land untouched.

And along the untouched lane sprouted full-sized myrtle trees, their fuzzy white blossoms lining the road.

A road that Akaashi knew led to his death. 

 

  

 _The_ _scream cut through the night._

_Despite the sentence he had placed on Miya, promising death if anything happened to the prince, Akaashi’s fear for his son had barely ebbed. His protectiveness knew no bounds, yet could not be soothed. Guards, magical or no, could not compete with his brother-in-law. Wine tasters could be bribed. He could be killed himself, leaving the boy unprotected. There was little to assuage his fear._

_An entire wing of the palace had been renovated, placing the young prince’s bedroom between the rooms of his parents. In addition to the entrance from the hallway, two doors connected to the boy’s room, one to Kiyoko and Yui’s chambers, and one to Akaashi’s own unnecessarily lavish quarters._

_It was because of this arrangement that Akaashi could tell that the scream came from the boy’s room. A second scream, just as loud, came shortly after, followed by tiny nails scratching against Akaashi’s door as though in terror._

_He incinerated his covers in his haste to jump out of bed. Not bothering to dress over his underclothes, he was to his son’s door in three strides, casting a strength spell on himself as he walked. He pulled the door off its hinges with the newfound power, only to find his son cowering as his bed was devoured by purple flames and sparkling stars._

_“Did you do this?” he asked in a whisper._

_“Yes,” was the wide-eyed response. “I didn’t mean to Papa! I’m sorry!”_

_Akaashi ran across the room and pulled the fire into himself, blissfully relieved that their flames were compatible. The bed was unsalvageable, and he barely escaped being hit by the canopy as it collapsed in on itself. There was no smell of smoke, just the chaos of that resulted when half of a large, balanced object was suddenly gone._

_“What’s going on!” Kiyoko yelled hoarsely, the loudest sound her soft voice could make. She stumbled through the left hand door with Yui pushing behind her, both in their pajamas._

_“It seems our son has manifested.” In desperation, Akaashi attempted to hide his terror with what he thought was a smile appropriate for such an auspicious moment. “At such a young age, his magic will be powerful indeed.”_

_The smiles he received in response told him that they had not fallen for his act for a second. Despite this, both crouched down around the five-year-old, whispering their congratulations and love._

_“Since his bed is destroyed, he and I will spend the rest of the night discussing his magic and the responsibility that goes with it,” Akaashi gave no quarter to the anxiety threatening to bubble up in his chest._

_“A wise decision,” Kiyoko smiled softly before turning to their son. “Goodnight, my darling. I am so proud of you.”_

_“And me,” Yui ruffled the boy’s hair._

_With a “Goodnight Mama, goodnight Yui!” the door shut with a click behind them. Akaashi crossed the room to the front door, dismissing the guards who had entered the room only moments after the purple fire on the bed had been put out. That difficulty dealt with, he turned to his son and crouched down to eye level, one question on his mind._

_“How long have you known you can do this, bumblebee?”_

_The blue eyes of his wife peered out from under his son’s uneven fringe. “I just was practicing to show you I had your magic, Papa! I wanted to be good, to make arrows like you do, but I couldn’t make them go the way I wanted.”_

_“You… can make arrows?”_

_The boy nodded, as though it were an obvious thing._

_“Show me. Try to hold it, don’t shoot.”_

_With the flick of a small wrist, a small arrow of purple light wobbled unevenly in the air, indicating why the child couldn’t manage its trajectory. But the shape was refined, the magic was controlled. Genius._

_“This is fine work, son,” Akaashi’s response was measured. “But next time you want to practice, please tell me, so we can practice together and spare your bed. We will set up a training schedule tomorrow, if that is what you want.”_

_The boy gave a rare smile and nodded, opening his hand where a blossom of purple fire bloomed. And Akaashi was reminded of what he already knew._

_There was not a thing in the wide earth that he would not do for this child._

 

 

Death remained a far way.

The crunch of the rocky, lifeless dirt under Akaashi’s feet contrasted greatly with the verdant life springing up around him. There was little choice but to follow the path laid out before them, but what were they to do when they arrived at its end?

At some point, Bokuto had taken his hand. Their fingers were clasped loosely, arms gently swinging as they walked between the daisies. Slowly. How quickly was one supposed to walk to his own demise? Their steady steps sent ripples of energy restlessly coursing through Akaashi’s legs. He wanted to run, to reach the goal as quickly as possible, to flee in the opposite direction, it did not matter.

“So… should we make a plan?” Bokuto’s voice was as steady as his steps.

They certainly should. Their previous victory had been the result of Akaashi’s overflowing magic, Washio’s aim, and Bokuto’s insane attacks at the body of the creature. They’d drained it somehow, until it had disappeared into nothing. There was no strategy. No plan. All luck. And they were left nearly dead, or vanished completely.

“I want you to cut off my arm.”

Bokuto’s first instinct was to rip his own arm away, which he did, turning in utter shock. “Ya _what_?”

“I cannot form a covenant strong enough by myself,” Akaashi continued to walk. He had no energy to explain the weeks of thought he’d given such a choice or the terror that loomed at the prospect. It was a decision made and that was that.

“You just expect me to do what ya say, and cut off your fukkin’ arm?” Bokuto threw his own arms open, disgust smeared across his face. “Keiji, you’ve pulled a lot of shit in the past, but this is far past-”

“I do not have enough magic to save you!”

The shout echoed like shattered glass.

Bokuto’s arms fell.

“I don’t have enough magic to save my son,” Akaashi added softly. His small shrug was the only motion available. “Or my wife, or my sisters, or Kuroo, or my own best friend. This creature will grow until it breaks through the wall, and then who knows what way it will go? Everyone sent to stop it has turned to dust like Konoha,” Bokuto winced, “or been one of the lucky few who has run away. We are the only two people known who have ever fought it and lived. But… I cannot make a covenant with my confession to you a second time.” 

“I figured that was why ya said it,” Bokuto stopped moving completely and crouched down to bat at some poppies. He lifted his head just as Akaashi tried to defend himself. “Don’t fret. I know it wouldn’ta worked if the feelins weren’t real. But all the same, would’ve liked it ta be for me, not for some monster.”

“I… I too wanted that,” Akaashi swallowed. “You must know by now that I wanted our life together. I want it still,” Bokuto jumped to his feet, “but I cannot protect either of us without making the most powerful covenant of my life. Koutarou, I am begging you, you must do this.”

“No.”

“No?” Akaashi choked on his own hysterical laugh.

Bokuto did not answer, just adjusted his pack and continued to walk along the path, which was leading to an unseen bend. One they should approach cautiously, but Bokuto was hurtling towards it.

“Stop, Koutarou,” Akaashi grasped his elbow, “we must finish talking about this!”

“Ya made a promise, Keiji,” Bokuto rumbled, shaking his arm free.

“I’ve made many promises to you, some of which I’ve broken,” was his cold response.

“Ya said you’d not use your mind games to get what ya wanted from me, but here ya are, talking about lives together ta get me ta _chop off your arm_.”

He had.

“This is a matter of life and death, Koutarou!”

“I said not even ta save my life,” Bokuto shook himself loose and rushed around the bend in the path.

And, just as Akaashi’s instincts expected, he ran right into sight of the creature.

 

 

 

_“Father, I have been thinking,” the boy said, his nose crinkling as if he was still currently in thought._

_“We’re meditating, so that’s the last thing you should be doing,” Akaashi chided, unfolding his legs and turning so that they were facing each other. Punishment seemed unnecessary, since his son was generally better at maintaining a blank mind than he was. Ignoring what that said about the boy’s thoughtfulness, his narrow focus but free mind had exponentially opened up his capacity for magic. He was as talented on the cusp of puberty as Akaashi had been on the cusp of manhood._

_“What makes a covenant work?” the source of the boy’s thinking was revealed._

_“As I’ve said before, It’s a sacrifice. Of a thing, of a moment, of a feeling, of a secret… The smallest action can be the most powerful covenant, if doing so causes the mage to lose something he can never get back, yet desperately wants.”_

_His son scrunched up his nose again, then asked guilelessly, “Have you ever done something like that?”_

_Akaashi swallowed, his commitment to be an honest teacher and parent buckling under the strain. “Yes, I have.”_

_His son’s eyes flashed, “Was it when you and Lord Bokuto defeated the monstrous creature?”_

_Backed against the wall, he cleared his throat and uttered the single phrase he had sworn he’d never say._

_“I’ll tell you about it when you’re older.”_

_Looking confused, his son scanned the courtyard where they had been meditating. The topic had been danced around long enough that he had probably grown used to not hearing anything on the subject from his father. His tutors were another matter entirely, but Akaashi was not one to prevent education in contemporary history._

_“But why do they work?” the boy’s voice was nothing but innocent curiosity._

_With a shake of his head, Akaashi put his hand on his twelve-year-old’s shoulder, “To be completely honest, I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does.”_

_“Would you ever make the other kind?”_

_“What do you mean, son?”_

_“The kind where you chop your arms off. What if you ran out of secrets? What if you had nothing left, but then that monster came back?”_

_“I suppose then I’d have to see,” Akaashi sighed._

 

 

“Bokuto do it now!” Akaashi’s voice cracked as he shouted, loud as he could. But the sound was muffled, out of place in the greenery around them. The distance between he and Bokuto was small, yet it might as well be the length of the entire world. 

Standing at the edge of the wastes, Bokuto stared up at the creature. His axe hung loosely in his hand. His nose had started to bleed, and Akaashi realized it was from an extremely deep hum that came from the enormous pillar of nothingness that stood before them.

“Bokuto!” he called again, this time more softly.

His companion’s head turned slowly, blood dripping onto his leather armor.

“I need to tell you something,” Akaashi panted, “and I need to know you’re listening.”

Bokuto glanced at the creature, which had still not noticed them, disguised as they were by the sprawling plant life around them. He turned to Akaashi again and nodded, though he was trying to keep his eyes on both him and the creature.

“I left without telling my son goodbye. I needed to keep him from following me. But a part of me is desperate for him to try and find me, even though I know he would likely be killed. I don’t want to die without seeing him one last time.”

Tears coursed into the blood running down Bokuto’s face.

“Guess you’re gonna have to live then.”

With his words, the covenant flowed through Akaashi’s veins. And with this flow of magic to draw its attention, the creature sprung to life.

Akaashi’s first spell was a shield cast on Bokuto. It was thick, and bent the light like the sun reflected on a slowly moving stream. Bokuto was already sprinting headlong towards the nothingness of the creature. It was lowering itself to the ground and spreading out, enormous arms reading to pull them into the swift embrace of death.

Using his staff as an anchor, Akaashi pulled back an invisible string, summoning an arrow the thickness and length of his arm. Aiming between the myrtle trees, he let the bolt fly. It buried itself where the creature’s head might be in a shower of crackling dark purple energy.

The creature reared back, overwhelmed by intaking so much power at once. In that instant, Bokuto struck.

Skidding under the reach of the arms of the creature, he swung a wide arc with his axe, taking out the base. The same steel that was immune to Akaashi’s magic was the only thing that could interrupt the nothingness the creature was made of.

The humming sound grew in intensity until the ground was vibrating and Bokuto was bleeding out of his ears. Akaashi realized that the reason Bokuto had been covered in his own blood when they had found him was the constant bleeding from such low pitched sounds.  Akaashi himself was immune, perhaps from being a magic user. There was no time to find out.

He recast the shield spell, adjusting it in the hope that it could filter out sound, but knowing there was only so much he could do.

The creature smashed Bokuto away, sending him head over heels across the ground. On the last spin, he caught himself, one foot behind the other, stopping in a controlled slide. Before his momentum completely slowed, he was sprinting towards the creature again.

Akaashi took this opportunity to approach. The force of the magic inside him drove him to the creature, who sucked it down like a parched man presented with a clear stream. Without even forming arrows, Akaashi funneled power through his staff, forming a dark purple bolt of lightning that struck at the creature’s midsection, just as Bokuto swung his axe directly below.

The sudden separation followed by the explosion of power, obliterated that portion of the creature.

“Well done!” Akaashi yelled, delirious with power. He struck again, and again, as Bokuto chopped away each piece of nothingness, only to have it slowly phase out of the world, replaced by the dry ground, or blue sky.

His staff had shattered forty years ago. He had not shielded Bokuto forty years ago. His hands and Bokuto’s body had nearly been destroyed as a result. But now, but now they were _winning._ Perhaps it was easy to kill such a mindless creature. If so, his son could have done it alone.

Bokuto’s sudden collapse was the only thing that reminded him that there was something his younger self had that his older self did not.

Endurance. 

The blood was flowing from Bokuto’s eyes, bright red tears, joining the blood that had soaked through the collar of his wool shirt. He did not complain, simply scrabbled to his feet and cut away a tendril of creature that had pursued him as he fell.

In that moment of distraction, the much smaller version of the creature expanded into a dozen arms, half chasing after Bokuto, half chasing after him. There was a movement to them, a vengeance, that screamed sentience. Akaashi had forgotten just how _human_ the creature behaved. He had forgotten so much of that day, the worst of his life. Only now was recalling things he should have already considered.

He ran out of the creature’s way, but Bokuto was not so lucky. Surrounded by a flurry of blows, he could not chop the arms away fast enough. They slammed, one after another, into the shield keeping him alive. It’s power was steadily draining.

With a mumbled spell, Akaashi sent a bolt of lightning to each of the seven pieces of nothingness, drawing them to him, using the moment between attacks to recast the shield spell.

He was not fast enough.

Bokuto slammed face forward, his shield completely gone, his axe notched. As Akaashi ran to him, he was blasted from his own feet, his staff snapping under him as he fell. The power from his earlier covenant was gone. There was nothing left. The creature hovered over Bokuto, ready to consume him the way it had consumed Konoha.

_“ _What if you had nothing left, but then that monster came back?_ ” _

Akaashi’s fingernails were blunt, but they were enough. Fast, fast enough to not stop himself, he dug into his eye socket, scooping out the flesh, and ripping as fast as he could.

There was no pain. Rather, pain was everywhere. Pain was his new existence. He could feel his eye despite the fact that it was gone. The world was flat. Blood coated his cheek.

Bokuto was going to die.

The wave of magic brought him to his feet without his trying to stand. He looked at the creature, and it looked back. In his hand, he smashed his eye, feeling the liquid run down his sleeve.

“Get away from him,” he hissed.

 

 

_“You understand that, if you don’t complete this task, I’ll have to send the young prince to finish the job. Too bad to send the heir into that kind of danger, but in this realm, other than you only he can make purple fire.”_

_Akaashi’s son was thirty years old, and yet Miya always spoke of him as though he were a toddling infant. It was a bluff anyway. The Reagent would not send the prince to his death unless Akaashi were dead and gone._

_“I am quite alive at the moment.”_

_Miya smiled mockingly. “Yes you are. I wonder what my father would think of things, if he was still in his right mind. He always liked you and your relentless practicality.”_

_“I can tell you if you’d like,” Tendou muttered._

_“Satori, would you like to join my brother-in-law on his quest?”_

_Tendou snorted, “And do what? Fill out the ledgers? You can kill me too if you like, just have the decency to stab me in the back.”_

_“When I was a child I thought you were a monster, did you know that?”_

_“Surprising then, isn’t it ’Tsumu? You being the monster all along?”_

_“Lie to him,” Akaashi stared at the turrets of the castle. “Tell him I ran off to be with a teenage lover. That I didn’t bother to say goodbye. That I broke your heart.”_

_“He might chase you in that case,” Kiyoko lifted her eyebrow as he turned back to her. “Fight you for my honor.”_

_They were leaning against a parapet overlooking the training grounds. It was low enough to see the activities below but not so low that those fighting could recognize them easily._

_“Then poison him,” Akaashi said ruthlessly. “Not enough to kill him, but enough to keep him abed.”_

_“I’ve never poisoned anyone,” she gazed across the grass. “You’d think, after my brother died I would have been taught the art, but I’m going to have to ask help from my local apothecary.”_

_“I’m sure she’ll be more than willing,” Akaashi nearly winked, then deemed it inappropriate for the atmosphere._

_“Is there anything else?”_

_“No. Ennoshita will manage my passing. He will inform you, contact my sist-”_

_“Do not be so certain of your own death!”_

_Her vehemence was heartrending but there was little time for platitudes. He was to leave that afternoon, while his son was busy with his practice._

_“But it is a certainty.”_

_“You are the most powerful mage in the Dominion, and this warrior that they speak of is tremendous in battle. Not to mention he’s the man whom you-”_

_“The most powerful mage in the Dominion is down there,” he gestured to the training grounds. “And it is all guesswork when I am to go into battle with someone I have not spoken to for forty years.”_

_“You are being impossible.” Tears coursed down her cheeks, stopped in their path by his thumbs. “Let yourself love this man, and be free of all this. Believe that you will win, and make a life where you are free to make your own choices!”_

_“I did not say I will not be victorious, Kiyoko” he hummed. “Only that I will not survive.”_

_She pressed her cheek into his hand and he tipped their foreheads together._

_“After all these years,” he breathed, “I could not have asked for a better wife, my princess.”_

_“And I, a better husband, Keiji,” she whispered through her tears._

_There was a finality to their words. They held the understanding of two people who, being held hostage, had discovered companionship instead of misery. But they both knew an unquestionable truth: even if he survived, Akaashi would never come back. He could not._

_“Thank you,” she pulled away, looking down the balustrade where their son was dueling Kyoutani under Sugawara and Semi’s watchful eyes. “Thank you for our son.”_

_The young man executed a profoundly complicated combination of footwork and spellwork, knocking both Kyoutani and Sugawara on their backs. The hint of a smile flickered across his features as he caught Akaashi’s glance. The ghost of a wave, a toss of dark hair, and then it was back to work. And Akaashi knew without question that he was no longer a protector to his child, but a liability._

_“No, my dearest friend. It is you I should thank. Please, when I have gone, let him know that his father loved him more than anyone else in the world.”_

 

 

The magic that coursed through him was wild and unmanageable. He picked Bokuto up with it, healing him in midair, while fighting off the arms that had reached him with an arm coated in crackling waves of energy.

“Keiji,” Bokuto huffed, as his grey skin eased back into a healthy color, “your eye, oh Keiji…”

“It’s nothing, now pick up your axe,” he insisted. Raw power shot from his palms in crackling waves of purple-tinged black lightning all the while, dark blood soaked through his shirt.

The arms of the creature recoiled for a moment and then surged forward. Akaashi wrapped himself in energy, physically lashing out in the absence of his staff. 

His magic decreased steadily. With every touch, he felt himself growing weaker, until the dizzying feeling of being giddy with power was replaced by his new lack of depth perception, and the somber taste of reality. Even as powerful as he was, he could not win.

In this moment of introspection, Bokuto made his move. With a mighty swing, he dismembered all of the arms at their source.

“NOW, KEIJI!” 

Drawing on the power that remained, Akaashi made himself into a ball of energy, black-purple lightning surging through the disconnected arms of the creature. They writhed themselves out of existence, leaving only reality in their wake.

The creature pulled into itself, as it nothingness could take time to recover from injury.

Akaashi fell to his knees, Bokuto crawling across the ground towards him. His axe came first, split on both sides like a rotting apple core. The man that followed was battered and bruised, crusted in blood, grime only broken up by tear tracks.

“Your eye, Keiji,” he wept. Such a gentle man.

Akaashi ripped at his own shirt, wrapping a long piece around his head to cover the gaping wound. “But you’re alive,” he reached out and showered kisses on Bokuto’s blistered fingers. “You’re still alive, Koutarou.”

Behind him the creature began to manipulate the world around it, as though the nothingness had now become a black void, sucking in even the lifeless stones and dirt. In the center of that hole, was the outline of a person.

“You must run away.”

Bokuto lifted himself to his knees and pulled Akaashi forward, cradling him in his arms.

“What makes you think I’m gonna do somethin’ so stupid as that?”

The pull of the void grew stronger, and Akaashi saw the distinct outline of a soldier. Just as he expected. Just as he had seen before.

“The creature, the reason we didn’t kill it last time,” his words piled together in his mouth, desperate to escape as quickly as possible. “It’s… it’s full of people. I think, I think its a door to the void, and they’re holding open.”

Bokuto pulled him tighter as they rose to their feet together. The destroyed axe was dropped next to the shattered remains of Akaashi’s staff, and then Bokuto let go.

That was enough time for Akaashi to run. He threw himself towards the creature, trying to both move and keep from being sucked in to the abyss at the same time. This was suddenly made easier when Bokuto wrapped his arms around him from behind.

“I’m going to touch it! I’m going to touch them!” Akaashi gasped, the pull of the void ripping and tearing at his skin. “They’re going to kill me, Koutarou you need not die as well. Let go!”

“Won’t do it,” Bokuto said into the skin of his neck. “Don’t ya dare stop me! Let me choose fer once…”

Power thrummed through Akaashi’s veins. Enough to send Bokuto back to the City if he so chose.

“I’m begging you,” tears sizzled on his skin from the intensity energy flowing through and around him. “I’m begging you to make a different choice, Koutarou.”

“I won’t, love,” there was the sound of tearing, and then Akaashi’s doublet was open at the back, the feel of Bokuto’s bare skin against his.

“It won’t be enough,” the tears had turned to dry sobs. “Please, let me do this alone.”

“No, Keiji,” the denial echoed through Akaashi’s brain, long and deep.

There was nothing left to say.

“Now c’mon. Let’s be gettin’ it over with.”

A step forward brought pain. The creature shifted into Konoha’s silhouette, his young, strong body a mockery of the old man he should have been.

As though he were really there, Akaashi reached out and put his trembling hands on his cheeks.

Someone was screaming, a hoarse sound that indicated the quickly approaching end of their ability to talk. It took several moments for Akaashi to realize that the person screaming was him. His power was being drained more quickly than he could hold onto it. He scrabbled for more.

“On very dark days, I used to wish my sister had died, instead of her living to remind me of what I had done!” he bellowed, hoping Bokuto could hear.

The magic surged.

It was gone almost as quickly. Akaashi’s ears were bleeding, the thick liquid running down his neck to join the blood from his eye.

“I have tried to kill my brother-in-law at least a dozen times, and failed at each attempt.”

The magic surged, but it was not enough.

“Koutarou, I have loved you these long years, and at times my longing for you reached the level of desperation. But I would not trade the life I have lived, I would not trade my son, for a thousand lifetimes with you.”

Raw power exploded. Akaashi’s hair stood on end. His eyes burned with the fury of it. He felt Bokuto flinch and hiss, as the place where their skin touched had already begun leeching away Bokuto’s life.

“Let _go_ ,” Akaashi’s voice roared, a deeper, broader version of itself.

In front of him, Konoha flashed, and then his silhouette was replaced by that of a small man, hunched with age. In his hand was a staff.

Akaashi forced magic into his hands and pressed into the void creature’s face. Blood dripped from his own eyes and nose and ears, while Bokuto shivered behind him. Moving his physical body felt wrong, but he did so, trying to shake Bokuto off.

The man shuddered out of existence, and was replaced by a small, rounded female silhouette. On her head was a crown of flowering branches, their type made indistinguishable by the void.

She threw her head back and roared, darkness flowing from her mouth instead of sound.

“Vidis!” Akaashi shouted, holding his hands tight to her cheeks. “You’re trapped, and in pain. You have lost so much, but there is no balm for your hurt in chaos and destruction.”

The bridge between earth and void said nothing, instead it reached for Bokuto’s arm.

“YOU WILL NOT,” Akaashi forced every last ounce of magic into his hands, “YOU WILL NOT TOUCH HIM.”

The shape of the long-dead vidis cocked her head, effortlessly moving his arms. She sucked away the last of his power. She sucked away the last of his life. Akaashi stood from the simple strength of Bokuto’s arms. His life depended on the point of contact between their bodies.

“Hold on, love,” came words from somewhere. Everywhere.

There had been a deep noise, a steady humming. Now it rose up the scale to a piercing scream. The shape in front of him collapsed into a single white light of unbearable intensity.

And then it exploded.   

  

* * *

 

 

It seemed as though someone who owned a beautiful garden had suddenly decided to not have one anymore. This person unfortunately had no idea how to be rid of it. He ripped some up, leaving it in tatters all around. Some of it he scorched to the ground while some of it was left standing in perfect condition.

“Hey, Nattie do you think that maybe this Bokuto guy is our dad?” Hinata asked his sister excitedly. “You look a _lot_ like him in the drawing Lady Yachi brought. And I look a lot like you!”

He was standing very close, so his voice was very loud in Yachi’s ear.

“Shrimp,” their archer sneered, “you just want him to be your dad so you have one. ’Tall and muscular’ can’t be your only family resemblance, especially since you’re neither.”

“Um,” Yachi decided against her more nervous judgement to speak up. “Perhaps we shouldn’t fight while Yamaguchi is trying to heal Natsu.”

“Yeah, shut up, you damned idiots!” the prince grumbled, only to get a taunting: “Why aren’t you healing her, Kageyaaama?” in return.

Yachi found traveling with His Lordship in disguise to be a truly enlightening experience. Kiyoko hadn’t stopped him, but the fact that he came along on her rescue mission was something Akaashi might kill a simple apothecary over. Even an apothecary who was having… _relations_ with his wife.

If he was still alive, that is.

“This place isn’t anything like I expected,” Natsu flicked Yamaguchi’s cowlick out of his face as he healed the gash in her leg - a parting gift from the swamp. “And ‘Dashi could fix my leg in the middle of a battlefield,” she flirted, turning the freckled man a deep shade of red.

Prince Tobio had grasped Hinata by the hair and was yanking him around rather violently. “I can’t because I phased us all through the damn wall, dumbass! Do you know how much magic that took?”

“Well,” Yamaguchi finally pulled back from his patient, “he doesn’t exactly have any to compare it to.”

The tall archer, Tsukishima, laughed. She had hired him as a bodyguard, only to find that he came with a healer companion as a matched set. Not that she was complaining now, as her other bodyguard tended to need healing quite often.

“She is right, though,” Yachi looked around with wide eyes. “This was supposed to be a barren wasteland.”

“Well. It’s a garden,” Tsukishima said, as though that was an enormous disaster.

“A really pretty one too,” Natsu and Yamaguchi answered together. Natsu’s exaggerated wink left the man sputtering.

In the time that it took for the broad-shouldered young woman to get to her feet, Yachi had thoroughly investigated the garden. There were only six types of plants growing around what looked to be a path lined by trees. The plants had no specific medicinal value; she would have recognized that right away. They also didn’t grow together.

“I think this is a magical garden,” she announced, just as Natsu secured her swords across her back and laughed.

“Well, yeah it is! Anything with myrtle in it is magical, don’t you know that?”

“I didn’t know that,” Hinata and the prince said at the same time.

“If there’s a fight that you’re looking for, I think this is the place,” Tsukishima sighed, completely finished with the current conversation.

The prince forged ahead, not waiting for an escort, and making it likely that Kiyoko would hate Yachi forever.

 

“There… are no bodies,” Yamaguchi announced what everyone was thinking.

“Shut up Yamaguchi,” Tsukishima said softly.

The axe was broken on both sides, the blade split in half the way someone might slice away a piece of meat. It had once been a remarkable weapon, even Yachi could tell that. But now it was useless.

Next to it was the prince, on his hands and knees holding the crumbling remains of his father’s staff.

The Hinata siblings were quiet. The revelation that their long time traveling companion was the prince seemed less important than allowing the prince to grieve.

“He’s alive,” Tobio’s voice cracked, “the staff stone’s not here. It wouldn’t just melt away. He’s alive.”

Yachi swallowed, feeling the weight of the rock against her chest. Turning around, as if in mourning, she pulled it from her shirt, then blew on it.

A soft light illuminated her nose.

Tucking it away again, she turned back to her companions, the hint of a smile dancing on her lips.

“I’m going to kill my uncle,” Tobio stood, hands clenched. “And then I’m going to rule like someone is supposed to, for when my father comes back.”

“And how is that, exactly?” Tsukishima asked, toeing the line of what was appropriate when someone’s father may or not have died.

“Good,” Tobio said.

 _Good_ , Yachi thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you everyone who has read this little experiment (i know character death is hard). 
> 
> thank you liv for encouraging me to write it. 
> 
> thank you to my boyfriend for reading so many parts.


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